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THE  COMPLETE 
WORKS  OF 

JOHN  RUSKIN 


Two  thousand  and  sixty-two  copies  of  this 
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: ')  ra'ffii  "by  John.  RusHu 


ST  ^> 

By  CinmLue  at  Assisi. 


LIBRART  EDITION 


THE  WORKS  OF 

JOHN  RUSKIN 

EDITED  BY 

E.  T.  COOK 

AND 

ALEXANDER  WEDDERBURN 


LONDON 

GEORGE  ALLEN,  156,  CHARING  CROSS  ROAD 
NEW  YORK :  LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 
1908 


All  rights  reserve. 


LIBRARY  EDITION 

VOLUME  XXXIII 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

VALLE  CRUCIS 
THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 
THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

VALLE  CRUCIS 

THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 

THE  PLEASURES  OF 
ENGLAND 


LONDON 

GEORGE  ALLEN,  156,  CHARING  CROSS  ROAD 
NEW  YORK:  LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 
1908 


BY 


JOHN  RUSKIN 


THE  GZHY  CEfj.r- 
LIBRARY 


CONTENTS  OF  VOLUME  XXXIII 


PAGE 

List  of  Illustrations    .........  xiii 

Introduction  to  this  Volume       .......  xix 

"  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us  :  Sketches  of  the  History  of 
Christendom  for  Boys  and  Girls  who  have  been  held  at 
its  Fonts  "  : — 

I,  "The  Bible  of  Amiens":  being  Part  I.  of Om- Fathers*' 
(1880-1885):— 

bibliographical  note    .       .       .       .        .       .        .  5 

contents       ......        ...  19 

TEXT       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .21 

II.  Chapters  for  Later  Parts  of  "  Our  Fathers  "  : — 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE     .  .  .  .  .  .  .1^0 

Notes  for  "  Ara  C(ELI  "  (the  intended  Part  III.  of  "  Our 

Fathers")  191 

"  Valle  Crucis."  Studies  in  Monastic  Architecture  : 
being  chapters  for  the  intended  Part  VI.  of  "  Our 
Fathers": — 

\.  candida  casa        .......  205 

2.  mending  the  sieve  ;  or,  cistercian  architecture 

(1882)   .  227 

Lectures  delivered  at  Oxford  during  the  Author's  Second 
Professorship  (1883-1884): — 

III.  "The  Art  of  England"  (1883): — 

bibliographical  note    .        .       .        .       .       .  .259 

contents      .       .  ......  265 

text  267 

ix 


PAGE 


CONTENTS 

IV.  "The  Pleasures  of  England"  (1884): — 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE     .  .  •  .  •  •  .413 

CONTENTS         .  .  .  .  •  •  •  •  .419 

TEXT  (with  ADDITIONAL  MATTER)     .  .  .  .  .421 

V.  Final  Lectures  at  Oxford  (1884): — 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE      .......  522 

1.  PATIENCE  (NOVEMBER  22)          ......  523 

2.  BIRDS,  AND  HOW  TO   PAINT  THEM  (NOVEMBER   29)      .           .  527 

3.  LANDSCAPE  (DECEMBER  6)   532 


The  FOLLOWING  Minor  Ruskiniana  are  also  included  in  this 


Volume  : — 

Letter  to  Sir  William  Butler,  K.C.B.  (1877)   22  w. 

Extracts  from  Ruskin's  Diary  at  Brantwood  : — 

sors  horatiana  (ferruary  28,  1879)  xxvi 

AN  INTENDED  BOOK  ON  HORACE  (mARCH   7,   1879)  .  .  .  .  Xxiii 

"jealous  of  every  golden  minute"  (march    1.3,    187*.))    .  .  .  XXV 

notes  on  HORACE  (april  10,  1879    MAY  3,  1883)     .       .  xxiii  ;/. 

a  call  to  action  (JANUARY  2,  1880)  xxvi 

the  storm-cloud  (JANUARY  5,  0,  8,  Fkuri  ARV  2(),  1880)        .  xxviii 

A  CARPACCIO  library  (FEBRUARY   10,   1380)         .....  Xxiii 

"fiction,  fair  and  foul"  (april  13,  Ji'LV  1.3,  1880)    .        xxvi,  xxvii 

crowding  THOUGHTS  (april  29,  1880)  xxiii 

paradise  with  ^'^joanie"  (may  2,  JLLY  2,  1880)  ....  xxii 
dew  on  sweet  WILLIAMS  (augist  11,  1880)  .....  xxii 
"beaten  and  tired"  (DECEMBER  20,  1880)      ....  xxviii 

grotesque  DREAMS  (JANUARY  0,   1881)  .....  XXviii 

RECOVERY  FROM  ILLNESS  ( APRIL  7,   1881)  XXViii 

A  year's  work  (DECEMBER  1,   1881)   .......  Xxix 

"our  fathers  HAVE  TOLD  US  "   (DECEMBER   18,   1881)  .  .  .  Xxix 

languid  days  (JANUARY  15,  1882)  xxix 

RE-ELECTION  AT  OXFORD  (jANUARY   17,    1883)  xlv 

MONTALEMBERT  (jUNE  25,  JULY   18,   1883)  xlviii 

"too  much  on  my  mind"  (may  26,  1884)  1 

NEW  plans  (JUNE  29,  JULY  2,  12,  1884)  1 

HAPPY  days  with  "joanie"  (july  13,  15,  1884)     .       .       .  xlviii 

a  visit  from  JOWETT  (SEPTEMBER   10,   12,   1884)  .  .  .  .  1 

the  NEED  OF  QUIET  WORK  (DECEMBER  23,   1884)  .  .  .  .  Iv 


CONTENTS  xi 

Minor  Ruskiniana  :  Continued : — 

Extracts  from  Ruskin's  Diary  in  France  (1880)  : — 

PAGB 

A  HAPPY  DAY  AT  ABBEVILLE  ( AUGUST  27)   Xxiv 

FROM  ABBEVILLE  TO  AMIENS  (aUGUST   29)     ......  Xxiv 

AT  BEAUVAIS  (aUGUST  31)   Xxiv 

SUNSET  AT  CHARTRES  (SEPTEMBER  10)   Xxiv 

Report  of  Ruskin's  Lecture  on  "Amiens"  at  Eton  (November  6,  1880)  5 

Extracts  fro»i  Ruskin's  Diary  in  France,  Switzerland,  and  Italy 
(1882)  :— 

THE  TOWER  OF  CALAIS  .........  XXxiii 

LAON  (august  12)  xxxiii 

disappointments  at  rheims  (august  15,  16)     ....  xxxiv 

the  church  of  CHALONS      ........  XXxiv 

ST.  URBAIN  AT  TROYES  ........  XXXlV 

turner's  "rivers  of  France"  (sens,  august  19)    .       •       .  xxxv 

VEZELAY  xxxv 

NOTES  ON  FLOWERS         .........  XXXVi 

CHAMPAGNOLE  revisited  (SEPTEMBER  3)         ....  .  XXxii 

ST.  Bernard's  birthplace  (September  3)  .       .       .       .       .  xxxvi 

SALLENCHES  revisited  (SEPTEMBER  10)  XXXVii 

THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  JOB  (SALLENCHES,  SEPTEMBER  11)        .  XXXVii 
THE  INN   AT  ST.   3IARTIn's  (sALLENCHES,  SEPTE3IBER  13)        .  .  XXXll 

A  MIRACLE  OF  AERIAL  MAJESTY  (SALLENCHES,  SEPTEMBER  14)       .  XXXVii 
IN  THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  ARVE  (gENEVA,   SEPTEMBER  15)        .  .  XXXvii 

TURIN  (SEPTEMBER  23)  ........  XXXViii 

THE  JOURNEY  TO  GENOA  (SEPTEMBER  24)      .....  XXxix 

DISAPPOINTMENTS  AT  GENOA  (sEPTExAIBER  25)         ....  XXxix 

PISA  REVISITED  (SEPTEMBER  26,   27)  XXXiii,  XXxix 

THE  NOISES  OF  PISA  (SEPTEMBER  29)     ......  XXxix 

JLUCCA  REVISITED  (SEPTEMBER  30)  XXXix 

THE  DEATH  OF  J.   W.  BUNNEY  (lUCCA,  OCTOBER  1)         .  •  .  .  xl 

THE  HILLS  ABOVE  LUCCA  (oCTOBER  2,   3)       .  .  .  .  .  .  xl 

FLORENCE  REVISITED  (oCTOBER  5)  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  xH 

MODERN  FLORENCE  (oCTOBER  6)     .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  xH 

A  SAYING  BY  COSIMO  DE    MEDICI  (FLORENCE,   OCTOBER  8)      .  .  .  xli 

PLANS  FOR  LECTURES  (FLORENCE,   OCTOBER  9)  xli 

THE  VIEW  FROM  FESOLE  (oCTOBER  10)  .......  xli 

DRAWLING  AT  LUCCA  (oCTOBER   15,   18,   25)     ......  xlu 

AIX-LES-BAINS  (NOVEMBER  12)        ........  xliii 

A  '^^  divine"  railway  JOURNEY  (aNNECY,  NOVEMBER  13)  .  .  .  xHii 
RETURN  HOME  (hERNE  HILL,  DECEMBER  3)  xlv 


xii  CONTENTS 

Minor  Ruskiniana  :  Continued : — 

PAGB 

Letter  to  Miss  Grace  Allen  (Talloires,  November  22,  1882)      .       .  xliv 

Letters  to  Edward  Burne-JoxVes,  1883  : — 

the  oxford  lecture  (march  14,  xMAY  1)  xlvi 

the  may-queen's  gold  cross  (aiARCH  14)  xlvi 

Notice  of  a  Speech  at  the  Performance  of   ''A  Tale  of  Troy/' 

1883   '^1^'" 

Notice  of  a  Speech  at  Oxford  (November  1883)  ....  390  lu 
Notice  of  a  Speech  at  the  British  Museum  (November  1883)  .  427  n. 
Extract  from  a  Letter  on  Worcester  Cathedral  (1884)  .  .  511  iu 
Letters  from  London  to  W.  G.  Collingwood  at  Coniston  : — 

FEBRUARY  AND  LATER,   1882   Xxix,  XXX,  XXXl 

SPRING  OF  1884   xlix 

Letter  to  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette"   (April  22,  1884)  on  A.  P. 

Newton  .............  393 

Letter  to  a  Girl  (November  1884)  ........  lii 

The  Lectures  on  "The  Pleasures  of  England":  - 

note  from  ruskin's  diary  (NOVEMBER  18,  1884)      ....  liii 

letters    to    the    '^PALL    mall    gazette"    (NOVK.MBER    19    AND  2.5, 

1884)   414,  524 

some  OF  his  digressions     ........       lii,  liii 

letter  to  miss  KATE  GREENAWAY  (DECEMBER   1,   1884)       .  .  .  Uv 

Letter  to  R.  C.  Leslie  (December  1884)   218  n. 

Letter  to  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette"  (April  24,  1885)  on  his  Resig- 
nation OF  THE  Slade  Professorship    .       .       .       .       .       .  .Ivi 

Rebiiniscences  of  Ruskin  : — 

BY  W.  G.  collingwood,   ON  HIS  CONTINENTAL  TOUR  (1882)  .  .  XXXii-xHil 

by  E.  BURNE-JONES,  on  THE  LECTURE  ON      CISTERCIAN  ARCHITECTURE" 

(1882)  .       .  xlv 

BY  C.   E.  NORTON,   AT  BRANTWOOD,    1883       ......  xlvil 

AT  THE  LECTURES  ON  "  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND,"   1883  .  •  .     li  W» 

AT  THE  MASTER  OF  BALLIOL's,   1884   Iv  HUd  71. 

AT  FARNLEY,   1884        ..........  Iv 

ON  HIS  RESIGNATION  OF  THE  SLADE  PROFESSORSHIP       .  .  .  .  Ivi 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


St.  Mary,  by  Cimabue,  at  Assisi  {Steel  Engraving  hy 

W.  Roffe  from  a  drawing  by  Ruskin)       .        .        .  Frontispiece 

PLATK 

1.  Beauvais  (^Photogravure  from  a  dratving  by  Ruskin, 

1880)       .......       To  face  page  xxiv 

IN  "THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS" 

II.  Amiens  :  Jour  des  Trepass^s,  1880  (Steel  Engrav- 
ing by  George  Allen  from  a  drawing  by  RusJciii)     ,,  25 

III.  The  Cathedral  of  Amiens  (l^hotogi-avure  from  a 

photograph)  28 

W.  The  Story  of  St.  Firmin  (Photogravure  from  a 

photograph  of  the  Scidptures  of  the  Choir) .        .  SO 

V.  The  Two  Dogs,  from  the  same  Sculptures  (Steel 

Engraving   by   Hugh    Allen  from   drawings   by  ' 
Frank  Randal)  32 

VI.  The  Dynasties  of  France,  to  the  Close  of  the 
Tenth  Century  (Steel  Engraving  by  Hugh  Allen 
from  a.  drawing  by  Ruskin)        .        .        .        •     },        ,,  34> 

VII.  The  Choir  Stalls   (Photogravure  from  a  photo- 
graph)  „  125 

VIII.  The   Southern   Transept   and    Fleche  (Photo- 

gravure  from  a  pitotograph)       .        .        .        •     »  ,,128 


XIV 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PLATE 


141 


IX.  Notre  Dame,  Nourrice  :  on  the  South  Door 
{Steel  Engraving  hy  W.  Boffe  from  a  photo- 
graph)  To  face  page  ISO 

X.  The  Western  Torches  (Photogravure  from  a  photo- 
graph) ^> 

XI.  The  Northern  Porch,  West  Front,  before 
Restoration  (Photogravure  from  a  draiving 
hy  Ruskin,  1856)  „       »  l^-^ 

XII.  Plan  of  the  Western  Porches       .       .       .  „  14-4* 

(The  following  Plates,  XIII.-XXXI.,  are  photo- 
gravures from  the  photographs  of  the  quatre- 
foils,  etc.,  on  the  Western  Front.  The  mimhers 
in  brackets  are  those  given  by  Ruskin  to  the 
subjects  in  the  text,  and  on  the  Plan.) 

XIII.  The  Central  Pedestal,  David  .       .       .        .     „  ,,146 


The  Central  Porch 

XIV.  Virtues  and  Vices  :  Courage,  Cowardice  ;  Pa- 
tience, Anger  ;  Gentillesse,  Churlishness 
(Nos.  ]-3)  „  ,,152 

XV.  Virtues  and  Vices  :  Love,  Discord  ;  Obedience, 
Rebellion  ;  Perseverance,  Atheism  (Nos. 
4-6)  „  ,,153 

XVI.  Virtues  and  Vices  :   Charity,  Avarice  ;  Hope, 

Despair;  Faith,  Idolatry  (Nos.  9,  8,  and  7)  „  154 

XVII.  Virtues  and  Vices  :  Humility,  Pride  ;  Wisdom, 

Folly;  Chastity,  Lust  (Nos.  12,  11,  and  10)     „       „  155 

XVIII.  Subjects  from  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Micah  (Nos.  13, 

14,  22  c,  22  d)  ,,        „  156 

XIX.  Subjects  from  Nahum,  Daniel,  Ezekiel  (Nos. 

23,  16,  15)  „       „  157 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


XV 


The  Fagade 

PLATE 

XX.  Subjects  from  Amos,  Joel,  Hose  a  (Nos.  19, 

18,  17)  To  face  page  158 

XXI.  Subjects  from  Micah,  Jonah,  Obadiah  (Nos. 

22  A  AND  B,   21,  20  C  AND  d)  .  .  .       „  „  159 

XXII.  Subjects  from  Zephaniah,  Habakkuk,  Nahum 

(Nos.  25,  24,  23)  „        „  l60 

XXIII.  Subjects  from  Malachi,  Zechariah,  Haggai 

(Nos.  28,  27,  26  c  and  d)     .       .       .     „       „  l6l 

The  Northern  Porch  :  the  Months  and  Signs  of 
the  Zodiac 

XXIV.  December,     January,     February,  March 

(Nos.  41,  42,  43,  44)      .        .  .        .     „       „  l63 

XXV.  April,  May  (and  Subjects  from  Zephaniah) 

(Nos.  45,  46,  25  c  and  d)      .        .        .    „        „  l64 

XXVI.  June,  July  (and    Subjects   from  Haggai) 

(Nos.  26  A  AND  B,  52,  51)      .        .  Between  pp.  l64,  l65 

XXVII.  August,  September,  October,  November 

(Nos.  50,  49,  48,  47)      .        .        .        .     „       l64,  l65 

In  the  Text 

The    Nurse-Madonna     and    the  Queen- 
Madonna  {Line  blocks  after  Viollet-le-Duc)  Page  l66 

The  Soidhern  Porch:  Scriptural  History 

XXVIII.  Daniel,     Moses,    Gideon,    and  Zacharias 

(Nos.  29,  30,  31,  32)     .       .       ,        To  face  page  l67 

XXIX.  Scenes  from  the  Life  of  Christ;  and  Sub- 
jects FROM  Amos  (Nos.  33,  34,  19  c 
AND  d)    ........       „  l68 


i  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PLATE 

XXX.  Obadiah,  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  and  isoLOMON 

(Nos.  20,  40,  39)    .       .       •       .        To  face  page  170 

XXXI.  The  Holy  Innocents  and  other  Subjects 

(Nos.  38,  37,  36,  35)      ....     „       „  172 


IN  "VALLE  CRUCIS" 

XXXII.  Plan   of   a   Cistercian    Monastery  {Afler 

Viollet-le-Duc)  „       „  242 


IN  ''THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND" 

XXXIII.  The   Triumph   of   the   Innocents,   by  W. 

Holm  AN  Hunt  {Photogravure  from  the 
picture  in  the  Walker  Art  Gallery,  Liver- 
pool)       .......,,„  277 

XXXIV.  The  Passover,  by   D.  G.  Rossetti  (Photo- 

gi'avure  from  a  drawing  at  Brantwood)     .     .,       ,,  288 

XXXV.  Study   for   A   Day   of   Creation,   by  E. 

Burne-Jones  (Photogravure  from  a  draw- 
ing at  Oxford)  ,,       „  298 

XXXVI.  ''Give  us  this  Day  our  Daily  Bread,"  by 
LuDwiG  Richter  (Facsimile  by  II.  S. 
Uhlrich  from  the  woodcut)        .        .        .  300 

XXXVII.  Education  in  the  Liberal  Arts,  by  Botti- 
celli {Photogravure  from  a  copy  of  the 
fresco  in  the  Louvre  made  before  restoration 
by  C.  Fairfax  Murray)    .        .        .        •     „  ,,314 

XXXVIII.  A  Lemon  Tree,  by  Lord  Leighton  {Photo- 
gravure from  a  pencil  draiving)         .        .  319 

XXXIX.  In  Fairyland,  by  Kate  Greenaway  {Steel 

Engraving  by  W.  Roffe)  .        .        .        >     „       ,}  344 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  xvii 

IN  "THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND" 

PLATE 

XL.  Miniature  of  St.  Cecilia  in  a  Page  of  an  Anti- 
PHONAiRE  OF  1290  (Ckromo-Utkograpk  from  the 
original  MS.)    ......        To  face  page  489 

FACSIMILES 

A  Page  of  the  MS.  (fair  copy)  of  "The  Bible  of 

Amiens"  (Ch.  iv.  §§  1,  2)       .       .        .       .  Betiveen  pp.  122,  123 

A  Page  of  the   MS.  of   ''The  Art  of  England" 

(Lecture  iii,  §§  6l,  62)  „    308,  309 


Note. — The  drawing  of  Beauvais  (Plate  I.)  was  reproduced  (by  autotype 
process)  at  vol.  ii.  p.  207  of  W.  G.  Collingwood's  Life  and  Work  of  John 
Raskin  (1st  ed.,  1893).  The  frontispiece  and  Plates  11.^  VI. ^  XI.  and  XII. 
liave  appeared  in  previous  editions  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens.  Plate  XXXII. 
has  appeared  in  Verona  and  other  Lectures  (189-1),  Plate  XII.  p.  133 ;  and 
Plate  XL.,  as  the  frontispiece  to  Ruskin  on  Music,  by  A.  M.  Wakefield 
(1894). 


XXXIII. 


h 


INTRODUCTION  TO  VOL.  XXXIII 


This  volume  includes  The  Bible  of  Amiens  and  subsidiary  matter,  with 
the  lectures  delivered  by  Ruskin  during  his  second  tenure  of  the 
Slade  Professorship  at  Oxford.  The  contents  are  I.  The  Bible  of 
Amiens  (published  at  intervals  between  1880  and  1885).  II.  This 
book  on  Amiens  was  to  have  been  the  first  part  of  a  long  series  of 
studies  which,  under  the  general  title  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us, 
was  to  have  included  sketches  of  Christian  history  and  architecture, 
grouped  round  various  local  centres.  Only  a  few  other  chapters  were, 
however,  written;  and  these  form  the  second  section  of  the  present 
volume.  III.  The  Aii  of  Engla7id,  lectures  delivered  at  Oxford  in  1883. 
IV.  The  Pleasures  of  England,  lectures  delivered  at  Oxford  in  October 
and  November  1884,  with  additions  (not  hitherto  printed)  from 
Kuskin's  MSS;  and  lastly,  V.  reports  of  Ruskin's  Final  Lectures  at 
Oxford,  delivered  in  November  and  December  1884.  The  Storm- 
Cloud  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  two  lectures  delivered  in  London  in 
J'ebruary  1884,  is,  for  reasons  of  space,  held  over  for  the  next  volume. 

The  contents  of  the  present  volume  thus  cover  Ruskin's  work 
during  the  years  1880-1884.  In  preceding  volumes  in  this  edition 
(XXVI.-XXXIL)  the  chronological  order  has  sometimes  been  super- 
seded in  favour  of  connected  topics;  for  Vols.  XXVI. -XXXI.  include 
the  completion  (at  later  dates)  of  books  begun  in  earlier  years,  while 
Vol.  XXXII.  contains  matter  (also  of  a  later  date)  closely  allied  in 
purpose  to  its  predecessor.  In  this  Introduction,  the  story  of  Ruskin's 
life  is  resumed  from  the  point  at  which  it  was  left  in  Vol.  XXV. 
(p.  xxviii.) — namely,  his  serious  illness  in  1878 — and  is  carried  down  to 
his  final  resignation  of  the  Oxford  Professorship  in  March  1885. 
The  years  now  to  be  covered  divide  themselves  into  three  well-marked 
periods :  (1)  Ruskin's  gradual  recovery  from  illness  and  his  resumption 
of  various  literary  undertakings,  broken  by  two  illnesses  of  a  like  kind, 
in  the  springs  of  1881  and  1882  respectively;  (2)  a  long  foreign  tour 
in  the  autumn  of  1882,  which  gave  him  a  new  lease  of  life  and 
strength ;  (3)  and  his  consequent  resumption  of  the  Slade  Professor- 
ship at  Oxford  during  1883  and  1884.^ 

^  As  the  present  volume  does  not  contain  the  whole  of  Ruskin's  writings  between 
his  resumption  of  work  in  1878  and  the  end  of  1884,  it  may  be  convenient  to  give 
here  a  list  of  the  principal  pieces  which,  though  published  during  that  period,  are 

xix 


XX 


INTRODUCTION 


printed  in  other  volumes.  The  dates  are  those  of  Ruskin's  writings,  or  (where 
these  are  unknown)  of  their  publication  :— 

1878.  July.  Deucalion,  Part  v.  (Vol.  XXVI ) 

„     Laws  of  Fesole,  Part  n.  (yol-  XV  ). 
October.  0/ i^V50/e,  Part  in.  (Vol.  XV  ).  ,^ 

November  December.  The  Three  Colours  oj  Pre-Raphaehtism.    (Reserved  for 
On  the  Old  Road,Yo\.X'X.-XlY.) 

1879.  January  and  April.  Proserpina,  Parts  v.  and  yi  (Vol.  XXV.). 
February.  St.  Georges  Guild,  Masters  Report^  (Vol  XXX.). 

April  and  July.  St.  Mark's  Rest,  Part  in.  and  Second  Supplement  (Vol.  XXIV.). 
May  Stones  of  Venice,  Travellers  Edition,  vol.  i.,  with  new  notes  and  Preface 
'(see  Vol.  IX.). 

July-September  (and  June  1880).  Letters  to  the  Clergy.    (Reserved  for  On  the 

Old  Road,  Vol.  XXXIV.) 
October.  Deucalion,  Part  vi.  (Vol.  XXVI.). 
December.  Notes  on  Prout  and  Hunt  (Vol.  XIV.). 
1880  February.  Usury:  a  Reply  and  a  Rejoinder.    (Reserved  for  On  the  Old  Road, 

Vol.  XXXIV.) 

Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture,  new  notes  and  Preface  (Vol.  VIII.). 
March  and  September.  Fors  Clavigera,  Letters  88,  81)  (Vol.  XXIX.). 
April.  A  Joy  for  Ever,  new  Preface  and  additions  (Vol.  XVI.). 
June,  August,  September,  and  November.  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  i.-iv.  (Re- 
served for  On  the  Old  Road,  Vol.  XXXIV.) 
July.  Deucalion,  Part  vii.  (Vol.  XXVI.). 
September.  Elements  of  English  Prosody  (Vol.  XXXI.). 

Preface  and  Epilogue  to  Arrows  of  the  Chace  (\'ol.  XXXIV.). 
December.  Bible  of  Amiens,  Part  i. 

1881.  October.  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  v.   (Reserved  for  On  the  Old  Road,  Vol.  XXXIV.). 
November.  Love's  Meinie,  Part  iii.  (Vol.  XXV.). 

„  Stones  of  Venice,  Traveller  s  Edition,  vol.  ii.,  with  new  chapter 
(Vol.  XL). 

November  and  December.  Bible  of  Amiens,  Parts  ii.  and  iv. 
December.  St.  George's  Guild,  Masters  Report  (Vol.  XXX.). 
„        Turner  Catalogue,  National  Gallery  {\q\.  XIII. ). 

1882.  February.  St.  George's  Guild,  General  Statement  (Vol.  XXX.). 
April,  May.  Proserpina,  Parts  vii.  and  viii.  (Vol.  XXV). 
August.  Sesame  and  Lilies,  new  Preface  (Vol.  XVIII.). 

„      Bible  of  Amiens,  Part  iii. 
188f3.  February.  Catalogue  of  Minerals,  Reigate  (Vol.  XXVI.). 

April.  Modern  Painters,  vol.  ii.,  new  Preface,  notes,  etc.  (Vol.  IV.). 
May.  The  Story  of  Ida,  edited  (Vol.  XXXI I.). 

,,     Deucalion,  Part  viii.  (Vol.  XXVI.). 
May,  June,  July,  November.  Art  of  England,  Lectures  i.-vi. 
May,  September,  and  December.  Fors  Clavigera,  Letters  91-93  (Vol.  XXIX.). 
June.  Study  of  Beauty  in  Large  Towns.     (Reserved  for  On  the  Old  Road. 
Vol.  XXXIV.) 

1884.  January.  Preface  to  Collingwood's  lAmestone  Alps  of  Savoy  (Vol.  XXVI.). 
March,  October,  and  December.   Fors  Clavigera,  Letters  94,  95,  96  (Vol.  XXX.). 
May.  The  Storm-Cloud  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  (Vol.  XXXIV.). 

„     Catalogue  of  Minerals,  Kirkcudbright  (Vol.  XXVI.). 
July.  Art  of  England,  Appendix. 

April,  July,  September,  October.   Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany,  Parts  i.-iv. 

(Vol.  XXXIL). 
August.  Catalogue  of  Silica,  British  Museum  (Vol.  XXVI.). 
October.  On  Distinctions  of  Form  in  SiUca  (Vol.  XXVI.). 
October  and  November.  Pleasures  of  England,  Lectures  i.  and  ii. 
December.  Preface  to  Chesneau's  English  School  of  Painting  (Vol.  XXXIV.). 

1885.  February  and  April.  Pleasures  of  England,  Lectures  iii.  and  iv. 


INTRODUCTION 


xxi 


1878-1882 

Ruskin  was,  as  we  have  seen,  very  seriously  ill  in  February  1878 
with  an  attack  of  brain-fever.^  Early  in  April  he  was  able  to  leave 
his  bed,  and  by  July  he  could  report  himself  as  "having  got  into 
quiet  work  again,'"*  though  conscious  that  he  must  not  "again  risk  the 
grief  and  passion  of  writing  on  policy."  ^  The  quiet  work  consisted 
largely  of  studies  of  rocks  and  flowers,  for  during  the  latter  months 
of  1878  and  in  1879  he  issued  two  Parts  of  Deucalion  and  one  of 
Proserpina.  In  August  he  went  with  Mr.  Arthur  Severn  to  Malham, 
and  presently  he  was  well  enough  to  pay  some  visits.  In  September 
he  was  in  Scotland  staying  at  Dunira  with  Mr.  William  Graham, 
and  in  October  at  Hawarden.  His  "health  was  better,"  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  noted  that  there  was  "  no  diminution  of  the  charm  "  in  "  an 
unrivalled  guest."  ^  His  visit  to  Dunira  is  recorded  in  two  pleasant 
papers  which  Ruskin  contributed  at  this  time  to  The  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury^ entitled  The  Three  Colours  of  Pre-Raphaelitisvi.  His  doctors, 
as  we  have  seen,^  forbade  him  to  incur  the  excitement  of  giving  evi- 
dence in  his  own  behalf  in  the  action  which  Whistler  had  brought 
against  him  (November  1878).  Early  in  the  following  year,  he  was 
troubled  with  other  legal  proceedings.  His  name  had  been  forged  on 
various  cheques,  and  he  was  called  to  London  as  a  witness  for  the 
prosecution.  "  Being  in  very  weak  health,"  says  the  report  of  the  pro- 
ceedings, "  Mr.  Ruskin  was  allowed  to  give  evidence  from  the  bench."  ^ 
It  was  characteristic  that  when  the  prisoner  had  completed  his  sentence 
Ruskin  gave  him  the  means  to  start  again  in  a  better  career. 

The  greater  part  of  1879  and  the  early  months  of  1880  were  spent 
quietly  at  Brantwood,  with  occasional  visits  to  London,  Canterbury, 
Broadlands,  and  Sheffield.  It  was  in  October  1879  that  he  had  the 
pleasure,  as  already  related,^  of  showing  Prince  Leopold  over  the  St. 
George's  Museum  at  Walkley.  At  Brantwood  he  received  many 
friends,  and  Darwin,  when  staying  at  Coniston,  came  in  sometimes  to 
dinner.  He  had  young  artists  to  stay  with  him — Mr.  Goodwin  and 
Mr.  Creswick  among  the  number — and  took  pleasure  in  giving  them 
encouragement.  His  private  secretary  at  this  time  was  Laurence 
Hiiliard,  "the  cleverest  and  neatest-fingered  boy,"  says  a  companion, 

^  Vol.  XXV.  pp.  XXV.,  xxvi. 

*  See,  in  a  later  volume,  the  letter  to  E.  S.  Dallas  of  July  8,  1878. 
^  Extracts  from  Mr.  Gladstone's  Diary,  quoted  in  Mr.  George  Wyndham's  Preface 
to  Letters  to  M.  G.  and  H.  G.,  1903. 
4  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  xxii. 
s  Times,  April  1,  1879. 
«  Vol.  XXX.  p.  311. 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

"that  ever  rigged  a  model";^  and  one  of  Ruskin's  diversions  was 
the  designing  of  his  little  craft,  the  Jumping  Jenny  :^  she  was  launched 
at  Easter  1879,  with  due  ceremony  (as  Ruskin  wrote  to  Professor 
Norton),  with  a  wreath  of  daffodils  round  her  bows,  and  the  singing 
of  a  versicle  written  by  her  master  for  the  occasion. ^  She  was  Ruskin's 
own  particular  boat,  and  he  had  much  pleasure  in  rowing  her.  In 
winter,  when  the  lake  was  frozen,  he  was  fond  of  sliding,  and  he 
records  in  Deucalion  his  close  observation  of  phenomena  of  snow  and 
ice.  As  soon  as  the  spring  and  summer  came  he  was  busy  in  noting 
the  first  appearance  of  his  favourite  flowers,  in  searching  for  perfect 
blossoms,  in  painting  studies  of  them.  "Paradisiacal  walk  with 
Joanie  and  the  children,"  he  notes  in  his  diary  (May  2,  1880), 
"  among  the  anemones."  "  Room  in  perfect  order,"  he  says  again 
(July  i),  "and  I  wonderfully  well.  Joanie  home  quite  well,  and 
children  happy — D.G. — and  sun  on  fells,  and  a  cranberry  blossom  in  my 
saucer  ready  to  be  drawn.  Found  them  yesterday,  in  breezy  afternoon, 
on  the  hill,  all  sparkling  like  little  rubies."  He  was  ever  discovering 
a  new  beauty,  unseen  before.  Studied  dew  on  Sweet  William  yester- 
day morning,"  he  writes  (August  11);  "the  divine  crimson  lighted  by 
the  fire  of  each  minute  lens.  I  never  noticed  this  before — blind  bat ! " 
If  he  was  puzzled  by  anything  in  his  study  of  flowers  or  birds,  he 
would  row  across  the  lake  to  drink  tea  with  Miss  Susan  Beever — the 
"Susie"  of  his  familiar  letters,  the  friend  of  every  bird  and  beast,  and 
deeply  versed  in  all  plant-lore.  He  interested  himself  greatly  also  in  the 
village  school,  planning  lessons,  arranging  pictures,  and  giving  treats. 
He  would  sometimes  deliver  little  addresses  to  his  friends  and  neigh- 
bours on  these  occasions.  One  such  address — deeply  religious  in  tone 
— has  been  printed,  and  is  included  in  a  later  volume.^  At  this  time 
he  used  also  to  conduct  family-prayers  at  Brantwood.  Perhaps  it  was 
because  he  regarded  himself  as  "a  member  of  the  Third  Order  of  St. 
Francis,"^  that  he  liked  even  the  domestic  animals  of  the  family  to  be 
present.  He  prepared  notes  for  Bible-readings,  and  wrote  prayers  for 
these  occasions. 

That  extract  above,  "Room  in  perfect  order,"  is  characteristic. 
"Setting  my  rooms  in  order,"  he  wrote  in  his  autobiography,  "has, 
throughout  life,  been  an  occasionally  complacent  recreation  to  me ;  but 
I  have  never  succeeded  in  keeping  them   in  order  three  days  after 

1  W.  G.  Collingwood,  Buskin  Relics,  p.  22. 

2  See  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  364  n. 

^  See  in  a  later  vohime  the  letter  to  Professor  Norton  of  Easter  Monday,  1870. 
^  Vol.  XXXIV. 

*  See  Vol.  XXIII.  p.  xlvii.  Compare  what  he  says  in  this  connexion  in  his 
fourth  Letter  on  the  Lord's  Prayer  (Vol.  XXXIV.). 


INTRODUCTION 


xxiii 


they  were  in  it."  ^  "  Study  like  a  Carpaccio  background  to  St.  Jerome,'^ 
he  notes  with  satisfaction  (February  10,  1880);  but  the  study  was  a 
workroom,  and  as  its  master  was  in  the  habit  of  working  at  a  dozen 
different  subjects  on  as  many  successive  days,  the  books,  portfolios, 
pictures,  and  notebooks  were  quickly  overlaid.  Like  many  other 
book-buyers,  he  was  in  the  habit  from  time  to  time  of  weeding  out 
his  library,  and  many  a  volume  found  its  way  to  the  auction-rooms 
containing  his  autograph  or  book-plate  and  a  note  of  his  reason  for 
disposing  of  it.^ 

The  arrangement,  and  re-arrangement,  of  the  drawings  by  Turner 
chosen  for  his  bedroom  was  another  recreation;  there  are  some  pages 
of  his  diary,  filled  with  notes  and  diagrams  for  different  schemes.  The 
early  morning  task  which  Ruskin  set  himself  at  this  period  was  the 
translation  day  by  day  of  a  piece  from  Plato's  Laws;  he  made  some 
progress  with  this  (as  already  recorded),^  and  intended  to  publish  it. 
Another  book  which  he  had  in  his  mind  was  to  deal  with  Horace. 
"In  reading  Horace  at  breakfast,"  he  notes  (March  7,  1879),  "planned 
the  form  in  which  to  gather  my  work  on  him,  to  be  called  either 
Mella  Matini  or  Exacta  Vulturni,^  but  I  think  the  first."  What 
form  the  book  of  Horatian  studies  was  to  take,  the  diaries  do  not 
show.  They  contain,  however,  occasional  notes  on  lines  or  phrases,^ 
and  in  one  of  them  there  is  a  list  of  English  titles  for  all  the  Odes.® 
Ruskin  also  set  a  few  of  them  to  music.^  He  describes  himself  at 
this  time  as  being  as  lazy  as  possible;  but  Ruskin's  eyes  and  mind 
were  ever  active,  and  he  notes  "  crowding  thoughts  "  and  "  unnumbered 
sights  of  lovely  things"  (April  29). 

In  August  1880  Ruskin  went  to  France  in  order  to  revisit  some  of 
the  northern  cathedrals,  in  view  of  the  sketches  of  Christian  History 
and  Architecture  which  he  had  projected.  He  desired  in  particular  to 
revisit  Amiens,  as  he  had  promised  to  give  a  lecture  on  the  Cathedral 
to  the  Eton  boys.    He  did  not  leave  other  work  behind,  for  the  Preface 

^  PrtBterita,  ii.  §  70. 
^  See  Vol.  XXXIV. 
3  See  Vol.  XXXI.  p.  xv. 

*  In  the  former  title,  he  is  thinking  of  Odes  iv.  2,  27  ("  Ego  apis  Matinse,"  etc.  : 
see  Vol,  XIX.  p.  94) ;  in  the  latter  (for  which  "  Exacta  Vulturis  "  would  be  better), 
of  Odes  iii.  30,  1  ("Exegi  monumentum,"  etc.)  and  iii.  4,  9  (^^Me  fabulosae  Vulture 
in  Apulo/'  etc.). 

5  As,  for  instance,  on  April  10,  1879,  Horace's  definition  of  a  gentleman  :  Est 
animus  tibi :  sunt  mores  et  lingua,  fidesque.  I've  learned  this  to-day,  quite  one  of 
the  most  exhaustive  verses  in  the  world."  On  May  3,  1883,  he  added,  "Above  bit 
of  Horace  comes  in  now  providentially,  for  close  of  lecture  on  classic  art."  See 
below,  p.  306  (where  the  bit  is  used  at  the  beginning  of  the  lecture). 

«  See  Vol.  XXXIV. 

'  See  Vol.  XXXI.  pp.  xxxv.,  516. 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

to  Arrows  of  the  Chace  was  written  at  Rouen,  and  the  Epilogue  at 
Amiens.  The  tour  was  in  two  parts.^  He  went  first  for  six  weeks 
with  Laurence  Hilliard  and  one  of  his  sisters ;  then  crossed  to  Dover  and 
stayed  for  some  days  with  his  friends,  Miss  Gale  and  her  sister,2  at 
Canterbury;  and  next  returned  to  France,  being  accompanied  by  Mr. 
Arthur  Severn  and  Mr.  Brabazon.  Those  who  saw  the  Ruskin  exhibi- 
tion in  London  in  1907  will  remember  many  drawings  made  on  this 
tour,  and  among  them  one  which  was  inscribed  as  sketched  in  company 
with  Mr.  Brabazon,^  and  which  shows  an  impressionist  "breadth''  not 
always  characteristic  of  Ruskin's  work.  French  scenery  exercised  its  old 
spell  over  him,  and  he  was  happy  to  find  some  of  his  favourite  spots 
unspoilt.  "Yesterday  a  really  happy  day,''  he  wrote  in  his  diary 
(August  27),  "finding  my  lovely  courtyard  safe*  in  the  morning,  and 
St.  Riquier  exquisite  and  calm  in  evening,  and  France  as  lovely  as 
ever."  "The  villages  along  the  coteau,  from  Abbeville  here,"  he  wrote 
at  Amiens  (August  29),  "  though  all  with  north  exposure,  were  entirely 
divine  with  their  orchards  and  harvests,  and  hills  of  sweet  pastoral 
swelling  above."  At  Beauvais,  where  Ruskin  made  the  sketch  here 
reproduced,  he  found  "more  left  in  the  town  than  ever  he  hoped  to 
see  again  in  France,"  and  even  the  new  railway-line  thither  from  Amiens 
pleased  him  with  "every  instant  a  newly  divine  landscape  of  wood, 
harvest-field,  and  coteau"  (August  31).  At  Chartres  he  was  equally 
happy  :— 

"(September  10.) — Up,  D.G.,  in  perfectly  good  health  and  lovely 
sunshine,  and  one  thing  lovelier  than  another,  in  the  inexhaustible 
old  town.  Up  to  crown  of  the  northern  spire  last  night,  just  at 
the  best  hour  before  sunset ;  all  the  plain  a-glow  for  (say  under 
command  of  eye)  forty  miles  each  ^vay,  as  clear  as  if  the  air  were 
glass — six  thousand  square  miles  of  champaign  and  winding  woods 
along  the  Eure." 

"The  Springs  of  Eure"  was  the  title  he  chose  for  an  intended,  but 
unwritten,  book  "wholly  to  be  given  to  the  Cathedral  of  Chartres."^ 
But  it  was  at  Amiens  that  on  this  tour   his  chief  work  lay.  He 

1  The  following  was  his  itinerary  :  Dover  (August  21),  Calais  (August  23), 
Abbeville  (August  25),  Amiens  (August  28),  Beauvais  (August  30),  Paris  (Sep- 
tember 1),  Chartres  (September  7),  Paris  (September  17),  Iloueu  (September  21), 
Dieppe  (September  28),  Canterbury  (October  2),  Amiens  (October  11),  flerne  Hill 
(November  4). 

2  For  whom,  see  Prceterita,  i.  §  85. 

2  No.  30  in  the  Catalogue  (Picquigny). 

<  For  a  view  of  this  courtyard,  see  Plate  VII.  in  Vol.  XIV.  (p.  388)  ;  and 
for  other  mention  of  St.  Riquier,  Vol.  XIX.  p.  xxxix.,  and  PrcBterita,  i.  §  177. 
^  See  the  Plan  of  Our  Fathers;  below,  p.  186. 


INTRODUCTION 


XXV 


began  to  write  The  Bible  of  Amiens  on  October  17,  and  the  writing 
was  combined  with  sketching  many  of  the  pieces  of  sculpture  which  he 
was  to  catalogue  and  describe.  To  attune  his  thoughts  to  the  system 
of  theology  which  he  found  upon  the  stones  of  Amiens,  Ruskin  at  this 
time  made  a  daily  study  of  the  Kalendars  of  saints  in  some  of  his 
illuminated  manuscripts,  and  copied  out  in  his  diary  verses  of  mediaeval 
hymns  or  litanies.  The  lecture  was  given  at  Eton,  on  November  6, 
shortly  after  his  return.  As  written,  it  contained  the  first  draft  of  his 
work  on  the  cathedral ;  but  he  forgot  to  bring  his  MS.  with  him : 
a  short  report  of  the  actual  lecture  is  now  printed  in  the  Bibliographical 
Note  (p.  5).  Some  days  were  next  spent  in  London,  at  work  in  the 
National  Gallery  upon  a  new  catalogue  of  the  Turner  Drawings  and 
Sketches,^  and  in  revising  the  proofs  for  the  first  part  of  The  Bible  of 
Amiens,  He  then  returned  to  Brantwood,  resuming  for  a  while  the 
quiet  life,  already  described — in  studies  of  sky  and  flowers  and  shells. 
But  only  half  the  story  has  been  told,  in  records  of  quiet  hours  and 
calm  skies. 

It  had  been  well  for  Ruskin^s  health  if  he  could  have  husbanded 
all  his  gradually  recovered  strength  for  the  studies  which  brought  him 
peace  of  mind.  His  friends,  as  he  says  in  Fors,^  often  counselled  him 
to  avoid  controversial  and  painful  subjects.  Cardinal  Manning,  for 
one,  had  written  to  him :  "  Joy  is  one  of  the  twelve  fruits  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  There  is  before  you  and  about  you  a  world  of  beauty,  sweet- 
ness, stillness,  peace,  and  light.  You  have  only  to  open  your  whole 
soul  to  it."  But  his  eager  spirit  made  such  peaceful  preoccupation 
and  such  economy  of  power  impossible  to  him.  He  knew  what  was 
good  for  his  peace,  he  perfectly  recognised  in  which  fields  of  thought 
the  danger  lay ;  but  with  "  such  things  to  do,  such  things  to  be,"  he 
was  unable  to  follow  only  the  paths  of  prudence.  At  times  he  suc- 
ceeded in  being  as  lazy  as  he  knew  how  to  be,  of  which  knowledge 
he  had  at  best  but  little;  but  at  other  times  he  was  bent  upon  the 
chace,  "jealous,"  as  he  notes  in  the  diary  (March  13,  1879),  "of  every 
golden  minute  of  every  golden  day."  At  every  new  trial,  as  he  says 
in  one  of  his  books,^  the  words  of  the  Sibyl  were  for  ever  murmured 
in  his  ears — 

"Tu  ne  cede  malis,  sed  contra  fortior  ito" — 

and,  whenever  some  new  strength  was  gained,  he  heard  in  it  a  call  to 
action.   "  Much  better  this  morning,"  he  notes  in  the  diary  (February  28, 

^  See  Vol.  XIII.  pp.  349  seq. 

2  Letter  72  (Vol.  XXVI II.  p.  757). 

3  Ariadne  Florentina,  §  214  (Vol.  XXII.  p.  447). 


xxvi 


INTRODUCTION 


1879);  "more  in  my  heart  than  I  can  write,  except  that  I  got  two 
oracles  from  Horace  in  the  night.^  'Fortem  memento/  I  remembered 
naturally  enough;  but  'Mors  et  fugacem  persequitur  virum'2  being 
opened  at  decided  me  to  go  to  London  to-morrow/' ^  The  diary  con- 
tains frequent  calls  of  the  kind— as,  for  instance,  this : — 

''{Januarij  2,  1880.)— Utterly  jaded  and  feverish  with  nearly  sleep- 
less night  and  crowding  thoughts — wonderful  in  sudden  call  upon 
me  for  action  and  I  so  feeble,  but  must  answer  a  little.  Thankful 
for  the  clear  guiding— see  the  new  Fors  begun  yesterday."* 

Here  the  sudden  call  was  immediately  responded  to,  and  Ruskin 
plunged  into  violent  controversy  upon  a  subject  which  of  all  excited 
him  the  most:  he  wrote  in  eager  haste,  yet  not  without  careful  re- 
vision, his  Rejoinder  to  the  Bishop  of  Manchester's  reply  in  defence  of 
Usury ."^  A  little  earlier  he  had  allowed  himself,  partly  in  connexion 
with  the  same  subject,  to  be  drawn  into  another  field  of  exciting  dis- 
cussion, that  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  relation  to  the  duties  of  the 
clergy  and  present-day  problems.  Nothing  is  more  striking  in  Ruskin's 
writings  of  this  period  than  the  contrast  between  the  easy  serenity  of 
style  in  the  essays  on  subjects  of  art  or  nature  and  the  fulgurant,  and 
at  times  somewhat  ill-balanced,  vehemence  in  those  on  politics  or 
economics.  If  the  reader  will  glance  in  succession  at  two  pieceSj 
written  within  a  few  weeks  of  each  other — the  Notes  on  Front  and 
Hunt  (Vol.  XIV.)  and  the  Rejoinder  to  the  Bishop  of  Manchester 
(Vol.  XXXIV.) — he  will  at  once  perceive  the  contrast.  Other  work 
which  greatly  excited  Ruskin's  brain  at  this  time  was  the  series  of 
essays — brilliantly  penetrating,  if  over-discursive — upon  Scott,  Words- 
worth, and  Byron  which  he  entitled  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul.  They  are 
among  his  best  literary  essays,  and  their  polished  allusiveness  shows  a 
mind  and  a  memory  in  fullest  activity.  He  enjoyed  writing  them. 
"I  always  get  into  heart  again,"  he  says  in  the  diary,  in  noting  his 
first  plan  for  the  papers  (April  13,  1880),  "  when  I  see  my  way  well 
into  a  thing."    But  the  strain  was  great.    ''Scott  papers  and  Byron 

^  Compare  Ruskin's  Sortes  Bihlicce :  Vol.  XIX.  p.  xxvi..  Vol.  XXII.  pp.  xxv., 
xxviii.,  xxix. 

2  Odes,  ii.  3,  1,  and  iii.  2,  14.  Ruskin  somewhat  characteristically  forgot  that  the 
word  in  the  first  line  was  cequam,  not  fortem. 

3  The  journey  (which  was  not  "to-morrow,"  but  a  few  weeks  later)  was  in 
connexion  with  the  le^al  proceedings  mentioned  above.  See  in  a  later  volume  the 
letter  to  Professor  Norton  of  February  28,  1879,  about  this  "  Sors  Horatiana. " 

^  Letter  88,  ultimately  dated  "February  8,  1880"  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  381)— the 
first  Letter  after  his  illness. 

By  which  term,  it  should  be  understood,  Ruskin  at  this  time  meant  all  forms 
of  Interest. 


INTRODUCTION 


xxvii 


work  very  bad  for  me  without  a  doubt,"  he  noted  later  (July  18); 
"  some  letters  too  have  made  me  angry — worst  of  all.'"* 

Other  people  were  made  angry  at  this  time,  as  we  shall  hear  in  a 
later  volume,  by  a  characteristic  letter  which  Ruskin  wrote  (October 
1880)  in  connexion  with  his  candidature  for  the  Lord  Rectorship  of 
Glasgow  University.^  He  had  been  put  forward  as  the  "Conserva- 
tive "  candidate  in  opposition  to  John  Bright,  but  he  signally  failed  to 
play  the  party  game,  and  was  badly  beaten. ^  The  publication  at  this 
time  of  his  scattered  letters  to  the  press  during  a  period  of  forty  years, 
under  the  title  Arrows  of  the  Chace,  attracted  much  attention,  and 
perhaps  encouraged  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  people  and  newspapers 
to  "draw""  him  on  every  conceivable  subject.  It  is  to  this  period  also 
(1879,  1880)  that  the  foundation  of  "  Ruskin  Societies in  Manchester, 
Glasgow,  London,  and  many  other  places  belongs.^  They  had  a  con- 
siderable effect  in  spreading  Ruskin''s  influence  and  increasing  the 
circulation  of  his  books,  which,  it  should  be  remembered,  had  for 
many  years  neither  been  advertised  nor  noticed  in  the  newspapers. 
Owing  to  the  fact  that  Ruskin  did  not  now  send  free  copies  of  his 
books  for  review,  the  professedly  literary  journals  made  no  reference 
whatever  to  anything  that  was  written  by  one  of  the  foremost  literary 
men  of  the  time.  The  Ruskin  Societies  and  "  Ruskin  Reading 
Guilds "  came  in  this  matter  to  the  rescue ;  but  the  necessary  penalty 
of  increasing  vogue  was  a  great  addition  to  the  burden  of  Ruskin's 
correspondence.  He  might  wish,  in  times  of  illness,  to  shut  himself 
off  from  the  world,  but  the  world  declined  to  be  a  party  to  the 
arrangement. 

It  had  been  well,  I  wrote  above,  if  Ruskin  could  have  found  peace 
in  untroubled  skies ;  but  this  also  the  fates  forbade.  No  man  was 
ever  more  sensitive  than  he  to  physical  impressions  from  external 
nature ;  for  indeed  physical  and  spiritual  light  was  to  him  the  same, 
and  never  was  there  a  man  who  lived  more  largely  in  the  contem- 
plation of  sky  and  cloud,  of  lake  and  flowers  and  hills.    The  physical 

1  Vol.  XXXIV. 

2  Bright,  1127 ;  Ruskin,  813. 

^  The  first  to  be  formed  was  The  Ruskin  Society  (Society  of  the  Rose),  Man- 
chester," 1879  ;  the  Hon.  Sec.  was  Mr.  F.  W.  Pullen  (for  whom,  see  Vol.  XXIV. 
p.  423);  its  first  ''Annual  Report"  is  dated  May  1880.  ''The  Ruskin  Society  of 
Glasgow,"  also  established  in  1879,  issued  in  1882  a  valuable  Repoi't  on  the  Homes 
of  the  People.  "The  Ruskin  Society  of  Birkenhead"  was  founded  in  1881  ;  and 
"The  Ruskin  Society  of  London"  in  the  same  year:  its  first  Hon.  Sec.  was  Mr. 
W.  H.  Gill  (for  whom,  see  Vol.  XXX.  p.  240).  Liverpool,  Sheffield,  and  Birmingham 
founded  similar  societies  at  later  dates.  In  1887  a  "Ruskin  Reading  Guild"  was 
established,  with  branches  in  London,  Birmingham,  Liverpool,  Bradford,  Oxford, 
Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Arbroath,  Elgin,  Dundee,  and  Armagh. 


xxviii 


INTRODUCTION 


corruption  of  the  heavens  by  "The  Storm-Cloud  of  the  Nineteenth 

Century"  a  very  real  phenomenon,  as  we  shall  see^ — was  to  Ruskin 

as  the  darkening  of  a  spiritual  light.  There  were,  of  course,  as  he 
records  in  his  lectures,2  days  of  serene  weather  and  of  wholesome 
storm,  and  at  such  times  his  mental  moods  responded  to  the  genial 
touch.  These  were  times  when  he  was  able,  as  he  says  in  the  diary 
(February  26,  1880),  to  gain  "so  much  of  life  out  of  the  night." 
But  records  of  the  "  plague-wind "  become  ominously  persistent.  Some 
of  these  records  are  printed  in  his  lectures ;  a  few  others  may  here  be 
added  :  ^ — 

''{January  5,  1880.) — Came  down  at  a  quarter  to  nine  into  the 
dark  room,  with  a  drenching  fog  over  all  heaven  and  earth. 

"  {January  Q.) — This  is  quite,  as  far  as  I  can  remember,  the  most 
miserable  January  I  ever  passed.  To-day,  pouring  small  rain,  after 
a  yesterday's  unbroken  fog,  and  miserably  dark. 

"{January  8.) — Deadly  fog — rain  these  three  days,  without  a 
gleam  ;  to-day,  Manchester  smoke,  with  the  usual  devilry  of  cloud 
moving  fast  in  rags,  with  no  wind." 

The  depression  seemed  to  be  lightened  by  the  French  tour  in  the 
autumn  of  the  year  (p.  xxiv.).  But  he  had  overtaxed  his  strength. 
On  return  to  Brantwood,  he  soon  found  himself  "  much  beaten  and 
tired,  and  must  positively  take  to  the  rocks  and  grass  again  for  a 
while"  (December  26).  The  depression  gathered  once  more,  and  was 
deepened  by  sleepless  nights  and  dreams — "  grotesque,  terrific,  inevit- 
able," he  calls  them  (January  9,  1881).  And,  presently,  the  troubled 
night  of  dreams  passed  into  his  days. 

At  the  end  of  February  1881  Ruskin  was  for  the  second  time 
laid  prostrate  by  what  he  afterwards  described  as  "  terrific  delirium." 
The  fever  lasted  for  a  month,  and  his  recovery  seemed  as  complete  as 
It  was  speedy.  "  On  the  22nd  March,"  he  notes,  "  I  was  down  in  my 
study  writing  business  letters,  and  yesterday,  the  7th  April— the  third 
anniversary  of  my  coming  down  to  study  after  my  first  illness — I  was 
walking  in  the  wood  for  good  three  hours  with  as  good  strength  as  IVe 
ever  felt.  The  first  primrose  out,  too — no  bigger  than  this  [sketch],  but 
very  delightful.  And  the  first  soft  sunshine  of  the  year,  lasting  into 
far  twilight."  But  the  recovery  was  not  complete.  The  patient  gave 
himself  little  chance.    "I  don't  feel  any  need,"  he  wrote  to  Professor 

1  Introduction  to  Vol.  XXXIV. 

2  The  Storm-Cloud,  §  34  (Vol.  XXXIV.  p.  35), 

'  These  are  selected  (from  innumerable  entries  of  the  kind  in  the  diaries) 
because  they  appear  on  the  proof-sheets  of  The  Storm-Cloud. 


INTRODUCTION 


xxix 


Norton  (April  36),  "  for  doing  or  nothing  doing  as  Fm  bid  !  but  on 
the  contrary,  am  quite  afloat  again  in  my  usual  stream."  He  was 
always  doing  something,  but  he  was  restless  and  irritable  and  could  do 
nothing  long.  "  He  is  almost  as  active  as  ever,"  wrote  his  secretary, 
Laurence  Hilliard,  "and  is  just  now  deeply  interested  in  some  experi- 
mental drainage  of  a  part  of  his  little  moor,  which  he  hopes  to  be 
able  to  cultivate ;  but  he  seems  more  and  more  to  find  a  difficulty 
in  keeping  to  any  one  settled  train  of  thought  or  work,  and  it  is 
sad  to  see  him  entering  almost  daily  upon  new  schemes  which  one 
cannot  feel  will  ever  be  carried  out.  So  far  as  he  will  allow  us,  we 
try  to  help  him,  but  the  influence  of  any  one  of  those  around  him 
is  now  very  small,  and  has  been  so  ever  since  the  last  illness."  ^  The 
diary  shows  that  this  was  a  time  of  great  mental  excitement,  border- 
ing sometimes  upon  collapse.  Yet  from  time  to  time  he  was  able  to 
make  progress  with  his  many  books.  "  I  begin  the  last  twelfth  of 
year,"  he  writes  in  the  diary  (December  1),  "in  which  I  proceed,  D.V., 
to  finish  Amiens  ii.  and  Proserpina  vii. ;  and  in  the  year  I  shall  have 
done,  in  spite  of  illness,  three  Amiens,  one  Proserpi7ia,  and  the  Scott 
paper  for  Nineteenth,  besides  a  good  deal  of  trouble  with  last  edition 
of  Stones  of  Venice ;  but,  alas,  what  a  wretched  year's  work  it  is !  and 
even  that  not  finished  yet !  But  then  there  was  some  good  drawing  in 
spring."  The  second  part  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens  was  finished,  and 
the  third  began,  a  few  days  later.  His  mind  was  busy,  too,  with  the 
general  plan  of  Our  Fathers,  but  he  found  concentration  difficult. 
"  I  must  do  it,"  he  notes,  "  a  stitch  here  and  a  patch  there " 
(December  18).  He  was,  however,  listless  and  depressed.  The  diary 
records  many  a  day  of  "hesitations,  shifts,  and  despairings,"  and  the 
dread  of  what  had  been  and  might  be  once  more  stood  not  far  behind. 
"  Terribly  languid,"  he  wrote  on  January  15,  "  but  better  so  than 
in  that  dangerous  excitement  which  came  on  me  in  October,  I  hope, 
for  the  last  time,  since  I  shall  never  encourage  it  again."  But  it  was 
not  so  to  be.  Shortly  afterwards  Ruskin  went  up  to  London,  and  on 
February  7  he  took  the  chair  at  a  lecture  on  "Modern  Sports"  given 
by  his  friend,  Frederick  Gale,^  and,  in  the  excitement  of  change  of 
work,  he  believed  himself  to  have  conquered  danger.  "  No,"  he  wrote 
from  London, — "I  won't  believe  any  stories  about  over-work.  It's 
impossible  when  one's  in  good  heart  and  at  really  pleasant  things. 
Fve  a  lot  of  nice  things  to  do,  but  the  heart  fails, — after  lunch, 

1  Letter!!  to  C.  E.  Norton^  in  Letters  of  John  Ruskin  to  Charles  Eliot  Norton^ 
vol.  ii.  pp.  171-172. 

^  See  a  letter  to  him  in  a  later  volume. 


« 


INTRODUCTION 

particularly!"'  Among  the  pleasant  things  were  sketching  at  the 
National  Gallery,  going  to  all  manner  of  wicked  plays  and  panto- 
mimes," ^  and  listening  to  music  from  Miss  Mary  Gladstone.  But  the 
music  did  not  relax  the  strain,  and  in  March  Ruskin  was  smitten 
with  a  third  and  a  very  severe  attack  of  brain-fever. 

Ruskin  was  attended  through  this  illness  by  Sir  William  Gull, 
who  paid  him  the  compliment,  in  acknowledging  the  patient's  fee,  of 
preferring  to  keep  the  cheque  as  an  autograph.  Though  the  attack 
was  severe,  Ruskin  again  recovered  quickly,  and  by  April,  as  will  be 
seen  from  his  correspondence  in  a  later  volume,  he  was  chatting  to 
his  friends  as  brightly  and  cheerily  as  ever.  To  his  friend  and  assistant 
Mr.  Coliingwood  he  wrote  from  Heme  Hill  :— 

"(Easter  Monday.) — The  moment  I  got  your  letter  to-day  recom- 
mending me  not  to  write  books  (I  finished  it,  however,  with  great 
enjoyment  of  the  picnic,  before  proceeding  to  act  in  defiance  of 
the  rest),  I  took  out  the  last  proof  of  last  Proserpina  and  Avorked 
for  an  hour  and  a  half  on  it ;  and  I  have  been  translating  some 
St.  Benedict  material  since — with  much  comfort  and  sense  of  get- 
ting, as  I  said,  head  to  sea  again — (have  you  seen  the  article  on 
modern  rudders  in  the  Telegraph  ?  Anyhow,  I'll  send  you  a  lot 
of  collision  and  other  interesting  sea-subjects  by  to-morrow's  post). 
This  is  only  to  answer  the  catechism. 

"  Love  and  congratulations  to  the  boys.  Salute  Tommy  for  me  in 
an  affectionate — and  apostolic — manner, — especially  since  he  carried 
up  the  lunch !  Also,  kindest  regards  to  all  the  other  servants.  I 
daresay  thej^'re  beginning  really  to  miss  me  a  little  by  this  time. 

"  What  state  are  the  oxalises  in — anemones  ?  WHY  can't  we 
invent  seeing,  instead  of  talking,  by  telegraph  ? 

"  I've  just  got  a  topaz  of  which  these  are  two  contiguous 
planes !  [sketch]  traced  as  it  lies — and  the  smaller  plane  is  hlindingly 
iridescent  in  sunshine  and  rainbow  colours!  I've  only  found  out 
this  in  Easter  Sunday  light."  ^ 

Ruskin's  physician  had  ordered  change  of  air  and  foreign  travel,  but 
he  stayed  on  for  some  months  yet  at  Heme  Hill — busying  himself 
with  the  May-day  Festival  at  Whitelands  College,  with  the  parts  of 
Proserpina  aforesaid,  and  with  the  purchase  of  minerals  for  SheflSeld 

1  Letter  given  by  W.  G.  Coliingwood  in  his  Life  and  Work  of  John  Ruskin, 
1900,  p.  362.  ./  ./  > 

2  See,  in  a  later  volume,  a  letter  to  tlie  Rev.  J.  P.  Faunthorpe  of  February  9, 
1882.  ^  ^  ' 

3  From  \V.  G.  Collingwood's  Life  and  Work  of  John  Ruskin,  1 900^  p.  363. 


INTRODUCTION 


xxxi 


and  his  other  collections.  But  in  the  end  he  obeyed  the  doctor.  To 
Mr.  CoUingwood,  who  was  to  be  his  travelling  companion,  he  wrote : — 

"I  was  not  at  all  sure,  myself,  till  yesterday,  whether  I  would 
go  abroad ;  also  I  should  have  told  you  before.  But  as  you  have 
had  the  (sorrowful?)  news  broken  to  you — and  as  I  jfind  Sir  William 
Gull  perfectly  fixed  in  his  opinion — I  obey  him,  and  reserve  only 
some  liberty  of  choice  to  myself — respecting,  not  only  climate,  but 
the  general  appearance  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  localities  where, 
for  antiquarian  or  scientific  research,  I  m^ij  be  induced  to  prolong 
my  sojourn.  Meantime  I  send  you — to  show  you.  I  haven't  come 
to  town  for  nothing — my  last  bargain  in  beryls,  with  a  little  topaz 
besides."  ^ 

II 

The  doctor's  prescription  was  happily  inspired,  for  the  tour,  which 
lasted  four  months,  gave  Ruskin  a  new  lease  of  health  and  strength. 
In  August  Ruskin  set  out  with  Mr.  CoUingwood  upon  a  holiday- 
journe}^  of  the  kind  that  the  judiciously  experienced  traveller  accounts 
the  best:  it  included  familiar  scenes  (as  will  be  seen  in  the  itinerary 
here  subjoined  yet  broke  also  some  new  ground.  Ruskin's  travelling 
companion  has  written  an  account  of  their  journey  in  a  chapter  which 
he  calls  "Ruskin's  Old  Road.''^  The  title  is  happy,  for  Ruskin,  it 
seems,  had  already  Prceterita  in  contemplation,  and  it  was  one  object 
of  his  tour  to  revisit  the  scenes  and  revive  the  memories  of  old  days. 
More  particularly,  he  drove  once  more,  as  in  the  old  posting-days, 
through  the  Jura  to  Geneva — stopping  at  Champagnole,  where  the 
Hotel  de  la  Poste  used  to  be  "a  kind  of  home  to  us.*"*  "I  never 
thought  to  date  from  this  dear  place  more,''  he  says  in  his  diary 

1  Life  and  Work  of  John  Ruskin,  1900,  p.  363. 

2  Calais  (August  10),  Laon  (August  12),  Rheims  (August  15),  Troyes  (August  17), 
Sens  (August  18),  Avallon  (August  19),  Dijon  (September  1),  Champagnole  (Sep- 
tember 2),  St.  Cergues  (September  5),  Geneva  (September  8),  Sallenches  (Sep- 
tember 9),  Geneva  (September  15),  Annecy  (September  16),  Chambery  (September  20), 
Turin  (September  21),  Genoa  (September  23),  Pisa  (September  25),  Lucca  (Septem- 
ber 29),  Florence  (October  4),  Lucca  (October  11),  Florence  (October  27),  Lucca 
(October  30),  Pisa  (November  1),  Turin  (November  10),  Aix-les-Bains  (November  11), 
Annecy  (November  12),  Talloires  (November  14),  Annecy  (November  22),  Geneva 
(November  24),  Dijon  (November  27),  Paris  (November  28),  Boulogne  (November  30), 
Folkestone  (December  1),  Herne  Hill  (December  2). 

2  And  in  two  following  chapters,  entitled  '^Ruskin's  *^Cashbook  '  "  and  Ruskin's 
Ilaria."  The  three  chapters  occupy  pp.  47-104  of  Ruskin  Relics,  1903.  In  writing 
them,  Mr.  CoUingwood  had  access  to  Ruskin's  Diary  (the  Cashbook"),  from  which 
he  made  numerous  extracts;  these,  with  many  others,  are  embodied  in  the  present 
Introduction. 

*  Prceterita,  i.  §  189. 


xxxii 


INTRODUCTION 


(St'ptcinher  3),  "and  I  am  here  in,  for  my  age,  very  perfect  health  so 
far  as  I  feci  or  know,  and  was  very  thankful  on  my  mother's  birthday  to 
kneel  down  once  more  on  the  rocks  of  Jura."  Many  an  old  memory 
came  back  to  him.  "How  eager  he  was,''  writes  his  companion,  "and 
how  deli^dited  with  this  open  upland !  By-and-by  we  came  to  a  wood, 
lie  cast  "about  a  little  for  the  way  through  the  trees,  then  bade  me 
notice  tliat  the  flowers  of  spring  were  gone:  'you  ought  to  have  seen 
the  wood-anemones,  oxalis,  and  violets';  and  then,  picking  his  steps 
to  find  the  exact  spot  by  the  twisted  larch  tree,  and  gripping  my  arm 
to  hold  me  back  on  the  brink  of  the  abyss,  'That's  where  the  hawk 
sailed  ofi'  the  crag,  in  one  of  my  old  books;  ^  do  you  remember?'"  At 
Sallenches  it  was  one  of  the  pleasures  of  the  tour  to  take  his  friend 
to  favourite  sights  and  scenes.  He  thus  showed  "Norton's  glen,"  so 
called  in  memory  of  happy  walks  in  former  years;  and  at  Talloires, 
on  the  lake  of  Annecy,  he  was  "  proud  of  leading  the  way  down  the 
steep  mountain-tracks,  well  known  to  him,  in  the  dark  after  long 
walks."  The  friend  gave  as  much  pleasure  as  he  received.  It  was  on 
this  tour  that  Mr.  Collingwood  made  the  geological  observations  re- 
corded in  his  Limestone  Alps  of  Savoy,  and  that  Ruskin  found,  as  he 
says  in  his  Introduction  to  that  book,  that  his  friend's  "  instinct  for 
the  lines  expressive  of  the  action  of  the  beds  was  far  more  detective 
than  my  own."  ^  Ruskin's  pleasure  at  Mornex  in  finding  himself  remem- 
bered and  in  meeting  old  friends  has  been  told  already,  in  connexion 
with  his  long  sojourn  there  twenty  years  before.^  He  even  revived 
his  old  schemes  for  finding  a  hermitage  for  himself  among  the  Savoy 
mountains.  The  Hotel  du  Mont  Blanc  at  St.  Martin's,  where  he  had 
stayed  so  often  in  earlier  years,  as  told  in  the  chapter  of  Prfrterita 
to  which  the  place  gives  its  title,  was  now  deserted  and  for  sale,  and 
he  records  in  the  diary  an  idea  of  buying  it : — 

"Sallenches,  September  13. — Fresh  snow  on  the  Varens,  and  the 
swallows  congregated  along  the  cornices  opposite,  as  I  must  try  to 
draw ;  after  noticing  first  the  plan  formed  last  night,  as  the  stream 
kept  me  waking,  to  buy  the  old  inn  at  St.  Martin's  now  left 
desolate.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  colour  of  the  last  days  I  spent 
there,  and  my  getting  the  two  Turner  pencil  sketches  of  it,*  the 
Cross  on  the  bridge,  and  the  lessons  I  have  had,  during  all  my  life, 
point  to  this  as  right.  CoUingwood's  poem,  read  last  night,  not 
without  its  meaning." 

^  See  Seven  Lamps,  ch.  vi.  §  1  (Vol.  VIII.  p.  223). 

2  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  571. 

3  See  Vol.  XVII.  p.  Iviii. 
At  Braiitwood. 


INTRODUCTION 


xxxiii 


"  I  had  made  some  verses  about  the  place,""  Mr.  Collingwood  ex- 
plains, "rather  on  the  lines  his  talk  had  suggested,  but  ending  with 
more  optimism.  ...  A  little  later  there  came  a  letter  addressed  to 
'  MM.  Ruskin  et  Collingwood.'  '  Quite  like  a  firm,'  he  said ;  *  I 
wonder  what  they  think  we're  travelling  in  ;  but  I  hope  we'll  always 
be  partners.'  The  terms  of  the  offer  I  forget,  but  they  did  not  seem 
practicable,  or  Coniston  might  have  known  him  no  more."  Later  in 
the  tour,  in  Italy,  Ruskin  revisited  another  of  the  places  which  had 
greatly  influenced  him,  and  which,  like  St.  Martin's,  gives  title  to  a 
chapter  of  his  autobiography : — 

"Here  once  more,"  he  wrote  at  Pisa  (September  26),  "where  I 
began  all  my  true  work  in  1845.  Thirty-seven  full  years  of  it — 
how  much  in  vain !  How  much  strength  left  I  know  not — but  yet 
trust  the  end  may  be  better  than  the  beginning." 

It  was,  then,  on  the  Old  Road  that  Ruskin  now  travelled.  The  road 
was  the  same,  but  the  traveller  was  old,  instead  of  young,  and  in  the 
external  conditions  around  him  Ruskin  noticed  a  great  and  a  melan- 
choly change.  Here,  too,  this  was  the  "  Storm  Cloud."  The  diary  is 
again  heavy  with  it,  and  a  record,  included  in  his  lectures  of  1884, 
was  written  during  this  tour.^ 

Ruskin  had  a  second  object  in  this  tour  besides  renewing  impres- 
sions of  his  earlier  life.  He  was  at  the  time  devoting  much  thought, 
as  we  have  seen  in  an  earlier  Introduction,^  to  his  museum.  He  had 
been  at  Sheffield  in  July,  and  the  prospect  of  a  new  building  seemed 
favourable.  He  had  artists  working  for  him  in  France  and  Italy; 
Mr.  Collingwood,  his  companion  and  private  secretary,  was  also  one  of 
his  helpers  in  this  respect;  he  desired  to  select  subjects  for  them  to 
record  and  to  take  the  opportunity  of  meeting  some  of  them  on  the 
spot.  We  shall  find  many  notes  of  these  different  interests  in  the 
account  of  his  tour. 

Calais  tower,  we  are  told,  roused  none  of  the  old  enthusiasm ;  he 
said  rather  bitterly,  "I  wonder  how  I  came  to  write  about  it."  But 
as  soon  as  he  set  to  work,  his  interest  in  the  place  revived ;  and 
he  notes  that  "  only  this  moment,"  in  sketching  the  tracery  of  the 
Hotel  de  Ville,  had  he  "found  the  laws  of  it":  the  scheme  of  the 
decoration  is  sketched  in  the  diary.  At  Laon  he  writes :  "  All  beautiful 
round  me — and  I  feeling  as  able  for  my  work  as  ever"  (August  12) 
Early  in  the  morning  he  began  a  drawing  of  the  cathedral  front,, 

1  See  The  Storm-Cloud,  §  79  (Vol.  XXXIV.  p.  70). 

2  Vol.  XXX.  p.  xlvii. 

XXXIII.  c 


xxxiv 


INTRODUCTION 


uhicli  he  finished  on  Monday  before  leaving.  "It  was  always  rather 
wonderful,"  says  Mr.  Collingwood,  "how  he  would  make  use  of  every 
moment,  even  when  ill-health  and  the  fatigue  of  travelling  might  seem  a 
good  reason  for  idling.  At  once  on  arriving  anywhere  he  was  ready 
to  sketch,  and  up  to  the  minute  of  departure  he  went  on  with  his 
drawing  unperturbed.  In  the  afternoons  he  usually  dropped  the  harder 
work  of  the  morning,  and  went  for  a  ramble  out  into  the  country ;  at 
Laon  the  hayfields  and  pear  orchards  south  of  the  town  gave  him,  it 
seemed,  just  as  much  pleasure  as  Chamouni." 

At  liheims,  his  earliest  impressions  came  back  to  him  ;  he  still,  as 
in  his  rhymed  tour  of  1835,  found  "very  little  in  it  to  admire 

"August  15. — Here  nothing  but  disgusts  and  disappointments, 
even  to  thirteenth-century  windows  of  cathedral,  which  are  entirely 
grotesque  and  frightful  in  design,  though  glorious  in  colour  [sketches], 
and  the  shafts  and  vaultings  are  the  worst  I  ever  saw  of  the  time ; 
the  arches  of  the  nave  meagre  and  springless,  the  apse  only  three- 
sided  instead  of  five,  and  its  double  buttresses  instead  of  single,  arch 
a  mass  of  weakness  and  confusion.  The  towers  more  and  more  are 
like  confectioners'  Gothic  to  me;  nor  have  I  ever  seen  so  large  a 
building  look  so  s^nall  at  the  ends  of  the  streets." 

"{August  16.) — I  cannot  find  ugly  words  enough  to  describe  the 
building  now  set  on  the  north  side  of  the  west  end  of  the  cathedral, 
a  narrow  street  between.  It  is  a  sort  of  pale-faced  Newgate,  or 
penitentiary,  with  square  windows  iron-grilled  in  a  vile  thin  way  in 
second  storey,  and  as  Fig.  5  [sketch]  on  the  ground  one.  The  barren, 
bleak  Roman-cemented  stupidity  of  soul  and  sense  that  it  speaks  for 
— set  against  the  old  work — kills  the  old  also,  and  shows  all  its  con- 
trasted follies — what  over-richness  and  vain  labour  are  in  it  shown 
more  violently  by  the  blankness  and  brutal  inertia  of  the  neighbour 
building.  I  can't  do  the  iron  grating,  ugly  enough  [sketch]. — It  is 
the  prison !  Prison,  side  by  side  with  Cathedral.  So  our  Peniten- 
tiary opposite  Lambeth."  2 

At  Chalons,  Ruskin  found  the  church  of  Notre  Dame  "one  of  the 
most  perfect  examples  of  pure  early  vaulting."  At  Troyes,  he  sketched 
St.  Urbain,  which  he  found  "  of  extreme  interest."  ^  He  noted  also  "  the 
church  of  the  Madeleine  for  a  quite  defaced  Norman  door  of  grandest 
school,  approaching  Italian;  but  with  the  English  dog-tooth  on  its 
inner  order  moulding,  and  the  basic  colonnade  of  the  north  porch  of 
^  Vol.  II.  p.  401. 

2  Millbank,  now  pulled'  down  and  replaced  by  the  Tate  Gallery :  compare 
Vol.  XIX.  p.  227.  y         y  y  V 

3  Compare  Val  d'Arno,  §  174  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  106). 


INTRODUCTION 


XXXV 


the  Cathedral,  fearfully  defaced  but  exquisite  in  earliest  and  delicatest 
naturalism  of  geranium  and  vine."  At  Sens,  Ruskin  was  in  a  town 
endeared  to  him  by  many  old  associations,  and  an  afternoon  walk  in 
the  valley  of  the  Yonne  and  up  its  chalk  hills  suggested  this  reflec- 
tion upon  Turner  : — 

{August  19.) — The  Seine  divinely  beautiful  here.  I  have  never 
enough  thought  out  that  Turner's  work  was  the  'Rivers'  of  France, 
not  the  'towns'  of  it — how  he  was  the  first  painting  living  creature 
who  saw  the  beauty  of  a  '  coteau ' !  The  glorious  lines  of  the 
ascending  vineyards  to  be  sketched  this  morning  if  possible,  and 
the  statues  of  porch  deciphered.  They  are  the  finest  I  hitherto 
know,  north  of  the  Alps." 

The  next  stopping-place,  Avallon,  was  new  to  Ruskin,  and  there 
he  stayed  for  a  fortnight.  "I  think  he  was  attracted  to  it,"  says 
Mr.  Collingwood,  "by  one  of  those  obscure  associations  which  so  often 
ran  in  his  mind — it  must  be  interesting  because  it  was  named  Avallon 
— Avalon  he  called  it  always,  dominated  by  the  idea  of  the  island- valley 
of  repose  where  King  Arthur  found  the  immortality  of  fairyland." 
However  this  may  be,  the  place  delighted  him,  and  there  was  much 
which  Mr.  Randal  (as  at  a  later  date,  Mr.  Rooke)  was  commissioned 
to  draw.^ 

From  Avallon  Ruskin  went  over  to  Vezelay,  but  the  heaviness  of 
that  church — its  inertia,  as  Mr.  Pater  calls  it,^  did  not  please  him : — 

"More  disappointed  than  ever  with  anything,  but  the  interior 
is  still  typical  Romanesque  in  the  nave,  and  extremely  pure  and 
melodious  Early  English  or  French  in  apse.  Note  generally  that 
the  early  churches  have  only  three  lights  round  apse,  and  that  no 
interior  can  be  perfect  with  less  than  five.  I  do  not  know  if  there 
are  good  examples  of  seven.  The  mimicked  'Last  Judgment' — 
M.  Viollet-le-Duc's — is  very  carefully  vile,  and  the  whole  west  front 
the  ugliest  and  most  characteristically  barren  I  ever  saw  in  an  old 
building.  Found  junction  of  granite  and  Jura  [limestone]  coming 
back  and  was  happy." 

The  last  entry  is  very  characteristic.  All  Ruskin's  varied  interests 
in  nature  were  on  this  tour,  as  of  old,  actively  pursued.  Wherever 
he  went,  his  eye  for  the  physical  basis  of  scenery  was  keen,  and  the 
diary  is  full,  as  of  old,  in  notes  of  flowers  picked  or  drawn  and  of 

1  See  Vol.  XXX.  p.  223,  where  extracts  from  the  diary  at  Avallon  are  given. 
^  In  his  essay  on  "Vezelay"  included  in  Miscellaneous  Studies,  1895. 


xxxvi 


INTRODUCTION 


mineralogical  specimens  collected.  An  instance  or  two  of  his  notes 
on  flowers  may  be  given : — 

"[Sketch.]  The  lovely  little  snapdragon  I  found  at  Sens,  here 
(Avallon)  luxuriant,  straggling  two  feet  high  with  dozens  of  blossoms 
among  slender  strips  of  leaves.  Blossom  with  upper  two  petals 
thrown  up  like  the  sharpest  little  fox's  ears,  and  more  like  some 

bat's  veined  purple  on  white,  the  swollen  lip  below  pure  white 

touched  with  yellow  in  the  throat." 

[From  a  list  of  "Flowers  on  ramparts  at  Genoa."]  "Purple 
thistle, — thistle  only  in  the  flower!  The  leaves  strap-shaped,  small 
and  smooth  ;  the  flower,  a  thin  cluster  of  purple  threads,  coming  out 
of  the  nastiest,  thin-set,  brown  skeleton  of  maHgnant  spikes  and 
stings  1  ever  saw  in  this  bad  world.  There  are  only  about  a  dozen 
on  the  ball;  so  ill  set  that  one  can't  see  the  spiral,  and  essentially 
of  the  shape  of  the  lower  of  these  figures  [sketches].  One  mustn't 
draw  even  an  ugly  thing  carelessly — how  oddly  bad  the  upper  one  is 
drawn  anyhow !  The  central  spine  is  really  fine  in  its  pure  tapering." 

Another  expedition  from  Avallon  was  to  Montreal,  where  the  gro- 
tesque carvings  set  another  task  to  Mr.  Randal.^  Ruskin^s  days  at 
Avallon  were  not  idle  either,  so  far  as  literary  work  was  concerned. 
It  was  there  that  he  wrote  the  Preface  to  a  new  edition  of  Sesame 
and  Lilies,  and  finished  the  third  chapter  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens. 

He  was  planning  also  Parts  in  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us,  and 
among  others  one  entitled  Valle  Crucis,  which  was  to  deal  with  the 
history  and  architecture  of  monasticism.  It  was  in  connexion  with 
this  that  he  went  from  Dijon  to  Citeaux,  the  home  of  the  Cistercians, 
and  to  St.  Bernard's  birthplace  at  La  Fontaine.  He  has  described 
the  places  in  a  chapter  included  in  this  volume,^  and  it  may  be  in- 
teresting to  compare  the  rough  notes  in  his  diary: — 

"  Champagnole,  September  3. — Yesterday  was  chiefly  notable  for 
the  morning  visit  to  St.  Bernard's  birthplace.  All  remnant  of 
chateau  now  destroyed;  but  the  little  level  garden  on  the  exact 
summit  of  the  hill  must  have  been  always — grass  or  garden,  and 
the  childhood  have  had  always  that  panorama  under  its  eyes.  Now 
— all  that  is  near  is  vineyard;  but  before  Citeaux  and  Clairvaux, 
what  was  it  The  panrrama  entirely  unbroken — Mont  Blanc  to 
the  hills  of  Eastern  Burgundy,  and  the  plain— limitless  north  and 
south;  the  little  hill  a  hmestone  outher,  about  150  feet  above  the 
plain.    Dijon  at  just  lovely  distance  underneath." 

1  See  Vol.  XXX.  p.  224. 

2  Below,  pp.  246-248. 


INTRODUCTION 


xxxvii 


His  travelling  companion  adds  a  characteristic  touch.  "I  recall,'" 
says  Mr.  Collingwood,  "the  surprise  of  a  bystander  not  wholly  un- 
sympathetic, when  Ruskin  knelt  down  on  the  spot  of  the  great  saint's 
nativity,  and  stayed  long  in  prayer.  He  was  little  given  to  outward 
show  of  piety,  and  his  talk,  though  enthusiastic,  had  been  no  prepara- 
tion for  this  burst  of  intense  feeling."' 

From  Dijon  the  travellers  went  by  the  old  road,  partly  walking, 
partly  driving,  through  Champagnole  and  St.  Cergues  to  Geneva. 
There  he  sketched,  and,  as  his  diary  notes,  "studied  the  Rhone" — 
with  results  afterwards  to  be  embodied  in  Proeterita.  He  went  up  the 
valley  of  the  Arve  to  Sallenches,  and  in  spite  of  the  storm-cloud,  found 
happiness  in  the  old  scenes: — 

"I  have  never  been  happier/'  he  wrote  (Sunday,  September  10), 
"in  seeing  the  Alps,  once  more — nor  felt  more  desire  to  do  better 
work  on  them  than  ever." 

[September  11.) — Opened  (meaning  to  take  up  Deucalion  but 
took  up  Bible  instead)  at  Job  xi.  16,  and  read  all  the  rest  with 
comfort.  How  I  have  been  forgetting  the  glorious  natural  history 
of  Job — though  I  am  thankful  it  is  noted  always  in  my  books,^ 
but  I  want  my  own  medicine  now.  Glanced  this  morning  over  the 
plan  of  it  again.  I  see  the  eleventh  chapter  is  the  first  speech 
of  Zophar ;  the  second  2  is  the  leading  piece  of  political  economy 
which  I  ought  to  have  given  in  Fors." 

''{September  14.) — Mont  Blanc  entirely  clear  all  the  morning, 
fresh  snow  in  perfect  light  on  the  Dorons,  and  the  Varens  a  miracle 
of  aerial  majesty.  I,  happy  in  a  more  solemn  way  than  of  old ; 
read  a  bit  of  Ezra  and  referred  to  Haggai  ii.  9 :  '  In  this  place 
will  I  give  peace.' " 

"Geneva,  September  15. — After  a  marvellous  drive  through  valley 
of  Cluse,  Collingwood  sectionizing  all  the  way,  and  a  divine  walk  to 
old  spring  under  Brezon,  everything  broke  down,  as  usual  at  Bonne- 
ville, and  an  entirely  dismal  drive  into  Geneva  through  cold  plague- 
wind;  and  fretting  letters  when  I  got  there  threw  me  down  to  my 
usual  level,  nearly — not,  I  hope,  quite ;  for  I  shall  try  to  remember 
the  Aiguille  de  Bionnassay  of  the  13th  at  evening,  and  the  Nant 
dArpenaz  looked  back  at  yesterday  morning — with  my  morning  walk 
once  more  among  the  dew  above  Sallenches — for  ever  and  a  day." 

Yet  once  more,  before  the  night  came,  was  he  to  find  happiness 
"beneath  the  cloudless  peace  of  the  snows  of  Chamouni,'"*  which  had 

1  See,  for  instance,  Vol.  V.  p.  379,  and  Vol.  XII.  pp.  105-106.  For  other 
references,  see  the  General  Index. 

2  For  Zophar's  second  speech,  see  Job  xx. ;  e.g.,  verses  15,  18,  19,  22. 


xxxviii 


INTRODUCTION 


"inspired  and  guided"  so  much  of  his  work.^  That  was  in  1888. 
Here  we  may  note  the  quick  succession  of  peace  and  storm  in  his 
diary  as  illustrating  both  Ruskin's  passionate  love  of  scenery,  and  also 
that  extreme  sensitiveness  to  physical  impressions  which  has  already 
been  mentioned-  among  the  characteristics  always  to  be  remembered 
in  reading  his  books. 

His  travelling  companion  has  recorded  some  incidents  of  the  tour, 
typical  of  another  of  Ruskin's  characteristics.  He  was  very  fond  of 
animals,  and  any  such  affection  appealed  to  him  instantly.  In  his 
drives  from  Geneva  to  Annecy  and  its  neighbourhood,  he  had  a 
"  Mephistopheles  coachman  and  Black  Dog,"  as  he  put  it  at  first;  but 
Mephistopheles  soon  "won  the  Professor's  heart  by  his  dashing  style 
and  friendliness  to  his  beasts;  and  on  parting  he  gave  the  man  twenty 
francs  as  a  honnc,  main,  and  two  francs  over,  as  he  said,  for  a  bonne 
patte  to  Tom,"^  the  dog: — 

"On  one  of  these  drives  we  stopped  for  lunch  out  of  doors  before  a 
wayside  inn.  To  this  lunch  there  came  a  little  dog,  two  cats,  and  a  pet 
sheep,  and  shared  our  wine,  bread,  and  Savoy  sponge-cakes.  The  sheep 
at  last  got  to  putting  its  feet  on  the  table,  and  the  landlady  rushed  out 
and  carried  him  off  in  her  arms  into  the  house ;  but  Ruskin,  I  think, 
would  quite  as  soon  have  let  the  creature  stay.  At  Annecy  the  landlord 
told  me  stories  of  his  big  St.  Bernard  dog,  how  he  was  defended  from 
other  dogs  by  the  cat,  and  how  sometimes  they  quarrelled,  and  then  the 
dog  had  to  go  and  sit  on  the  mat  out  of  doors  until  the  cat  had  forgiven 
him  ;  how  the  cat  also  was  in  the  habit  of  catching  swallows  on  the  wing, 
and  bringing  them  in  to  show — as,  certainly,  cats  do  with  the  mice  they 
catch — and  then  would  let  them  go  uninjured.  This  delighted  Ruskin 
at  dinner,  and  may  have  suggested  the  dream  which  I  see  he  records — 
'dreamt  of  a  fine  old  lion  who  was  quite  good  if  he  wasn't  kept  prisoner; 
but  when  I  had  got  him  out,  I  didn't  know  what  to  do  with  him.'  "  ^ 

The  travellers  next  turned  their  way  to.  Italy,  for  Ruskin  had 
made  engagements  to  meet  architects  and  artists  in  connexion  with 
St.  George's  work.  They  went  over  the  Cenis  to  Turin  and  thence 
to  the  sea.  Successive  entries  in  the  diary  record  again  his  changing 
moods : — 

"Turin,  September  23.--It  was  fairly  fine  all  yesterday,  but  Alps 
hidden  not  by  their  own  clouds,  but  by  the  filthy  city,  one  pestilence 

^  See  the  Epilogue  of  1888  to  Modern  Painters  (Vol.  VII.  d.  464). 
2  Vol.  XXVIL  pp.  xxv.-xxvi.  ^  ' 

^  Life  and  Work  of  John  Ruskin,  1900,  p.  364. 
*  Ruskin  Relics,  p.  74. 


INTRODUCTION 


xxxix 


now  of  noise  and  smoke^  and  I  got  fearfully  sad  and  discouraged, 
not  only  by  this,  but  by  not  caring  the  least  any  more  for  my  old 
pets  of  pictures,^  and  not  being  able  to  see  the  minerals  in  close 
dark  rooms.  Note  the  unique  white  amianth,  two  feet  long,  from 
Val  d'Aosta,  and  the  clear  topaz  with  interior  divisions  of  crystal 
like  my  pet  quartz.  It  is  fine  this  morning,  and  I  must  pluck  up 
heart  and  do  my  best." 

"Genoa  (Sunday,  September  24). — Here  in  all  comfort,  from  Savona 
by  the  thunderous  sea,  at  six  yesterday  evening,  after  the  most 
wonderful  day  of  vision  and  travel  I  ever  spent — Alps  clear  from 
Rosa  to  the  farthest  Maritime  all  the  earlier  day,  and  railway  taking 
us  within  twenty-five  or  thirty  miles  of  the  Viso ;  then  through  the 
sandhills  of  Bra  to  Montenotte,  down  among  the  strange  mounds 
and  dells  of  the  Apennine  gneiss  to  Savona,  walked  down  to  the 
sea,  beside  a  dismantled  fortress  which  is  certainly  one  of  Turner's 
late  subjects — then  among  the  olives  and  palms  and  by  the  green 
serpentines,  under  darkening  clouds,  with  constant  boom  and  sigh 
of  waves,  to  Cogoletto." 

"Genoa,  September  25. — Extremely  languid  and  low,  but  not  ill, 
after  night  disturbed  by  constant  omnibus  and  tram  and  various 
bellowings  and  a  day  of  disgust  with  all  things — proud  palaces, 
foolish  little  St.  Georges  over  doors;  Duomo  in  my  pet  style,  not 
doing  it  credit;  and  a  long  climb  over  rocks,  and  road  of  black 
limestone  veined  with  white,  commanding  all  the  heaps  rather  than 
hills  of  the  mouldering  earth,  looking  almost  barren  in  its  dull  grass, 
on  which  the  suburbs  of  Genoa,  hamlet  and  villa,  are  scattered  far 
and  wide;  the  vast  new  cemetery,  their  principal  object  of  view 
and  glorification,  seen  by  the  winding  of  the  waterless  river-bed." 

"  Pisa,  September  27. — A  really  happy  day's  work  in  Baptistery 
and  a  walk." 

"  Pisa,  September  29. — Penny  whistles  from  the  railroad  perpetual, 
and  view  of  town  from  river  totally  destroyed  by  iron  pedestrian 
bridge.  Lay  awake,  very  sad,  from  one  to  half-past  four,  but  when 
I  sleep,  my  dreams  are  now  almost  always  pleasant,  often  very 
rational.  A  really  rather  beautiful  one,  of  consoling  an  idiot  youth 
who  had  been  driven  fierce,  and  making  him  gentle,  might  be  a 
lesson  about  Italy.  But  what  is  Italy  without  her  sky — or  her 
religion  " 

"Lucca,  September  30. — And  here  I  am,  at  last,  again — in  the 

^  His  companion's  impression  was  dilFerent.  "  He  seemed  to  know  the  [mineral] 
collection  by  heart.  As  to  the  pictures,  the  way  he  pointed  out  how  Vandyck 
enjoyed  the  laying  on  of  his  colour,  in  a  portrait  of  King  Charles,  gloating  over  the 
horse's  mane  and  the  delicate  dexterity  of  the  armour,  makes  me  hope  that  even 
the  steam  tramways  of  Turin  had  not  utterly  darkened  his  life." 


xl 


INTRODUCTION 


eighth  year  from  1874, — when  I  had  precious  letters,  and  went  home 
by  Chamouni ;  i— and  Champagnole,  St.  Cergues,  Geneva,  Bonneville, 
Sallenches,  Annecy,  Turin— all  seen  once  more.  But  how  dif- 
ferent it  would  have  been  but  for  this  plague-cloud,  which  yesterday 
with  its  following  wind  darkened  and  tormented  all  Val  di  Serchio. 
To-day,  having  slept  well — curiously  well — I  can  scarcely  see  to 
write  ;  the  sky  in  settled,  stern,  gapless  doom.  Yesterday  walked 
round  town—first  to  Ilaria,  last  to  San  Romano.    Found  all,  D,G." 

"Lucca  {Sunday,  October  1).— Yesterday  received  in  the  grey 
morning  the  news  of  the  death  of  John  Bunney,  on  that  Saturday 
the  23rd  on  which  I  saw  the  bright  Alps  from  his  Italy.  A  heavy 
warning  to  me — were  warning  needed;  but  I  fear  death  too  con- 
stantly, and  feel  it  too  fatally,  as  it  is.^ 

"Yesterday  up  the  marble  hills  again,  where,  eight  years  ago,  I 
lay  down  so  happy  under  the  rocks  beyond  the  monastery,  to  read 
R.'s  loving  letter.3  Now,  my  strength  half  gone;  my  hope,  how 
changed." 

"Lucca  {October  2). — Yesterday  altogether  lovely,  and  I  walked 
about  lovely  streets  in  morning  sunshine.  Drew  in  peace  at  Duomo 
front  in  quiet  air,  and  climbed  to  the  ridge  of  the  marble  mountains 
in  afternoon — past  the  convent  with  its  great  ilex,  and  the  perfect 
cottage  with  its  well  under  the  chestnuts,  and  so  up  to  the 
terraced  fields :  saw  the  glittering  sea,  and  sat  long  watching  the 
soft,  sun-lighted  terraces  of  grass,  and  tenderly  classic  hills,  plumed 
and  downy  with  wood,  and  the  burning  russet  of  fallen  chestnuts 
for  foreground — thinking  how  lovely  the  world  was  in  its  light,  when 
given.  Then  the  Carrara  peaks  and  Guinigi's  tower,  in  rose  of 
sunset." 

"Lucca  {October  3). — Night  of  nightmares,  not  very  distressful 
but  provoking  and  tiring,  and  more  languor  than  I  can  account  for 
— unless  by  some  slight  malaria  here.  But  did  good  work  yesterday 
on  fa9ade  of  Duomo;  and  drove  to  foot  of  hills  across  Serchio, 
where  we  rested  among  olive-woods  with  low  cypress  avenues 
mingled — green  terraces  under  the  olive  trees  quite  rich  in  grass, 
and  the  cyclamen  in  masses  on  the  shady  pink  banks  with  full 
bright  crimson  pink  everywhere,  and  peppermint  in  vivid  blue,  I 
looking  for  forget-me-nots.  View  of  Lucca,  of  course,  too  lovely  to 
draw." 

"Florence  {October  5). — In  Gran  Bretagna  once  more;  very  well 

1  See  Vol.  XXIII.  p.  li. 
^  "I  think  his  fear  of  death  was  purely  the  dread  of  leaving  his  work  undone, 
with  some  shrinking  of  the  possible  pain  ;  his  sense  of  death  was  in  the  growing 
limitation  of  his  powers,  which  he  could  only  forget  in  the  presence  of  beautiful 
landscape  "  (VV.  G.  Collingwood,  in  Ruskin  Relics,  p.  102). 

^  See  the  Introduction  to  Prceterita. 


INTRODUCTION 


xli 


and  very  comfortable.  Sun  just  glinting  along  sides  of  yellow 
houses  beyond  Arno ;  Avhich,  if  it's  bad  weather,  I  shall  perhaps 
draw.  Yesterday  very  bad  weather  indeed,  but  I  got  work  done 
on  Lucca.  Came  on  here  in  wild  storm  of  wind  and  spitting  rain ; 
the  country  beginning  to  look  poor  with  fading  vines.  I  a  little 
headachy,  but  all  right  to-day  after  good  dinner  and  flask  of 
Aleatico.  The  sun  has  come  out  quite  bright,  but  the  sky  grey. 
Nothing  hurt  yet  of  Ponte  Vecchio,  or  the  rest." 

"Florence,  October  6. — Quite  depressed  and  useless  to-day,  after 
a  weary  walk  yesterday  through  Uffizi  in  morning  and  a  more  weary 
and  utterly  disgusted  one  through  town  in  afternoon.  Everywhere 
paviours,  masons,  ruin — degradation,  folly,  and  noise ;  and  the  wretched 
Germans,  English,  and  Yankees  busy  upon  it  like  dung-flies." 

"Florence,  Sunday,  October  8. — After  a  dismal  walk  through 
Accademia,  I  drove  yesterday  afternoon  up  to  Bellosguardo  and 
enjoyed  the  view  of  plain  and  drive  round — walk,  I  mean — though 
mostly  between  walls,  yet  under  olives  and  roses,  among  happy- 
looking  villas,  and  with  glorious  views  of  city.  Slept  well,  but  am 
terribly  out  of  heart  and  purpose.  Read  in  Machiavelli's  Florence 
Cosmo  de'  Medici's  sad  saying  before  his  death — keeping  his  eyes 
shut,  his  wife  asking  why :  '  To  get  them  into  the  way  of  it.'  Do 
the  best  I  can  in  beginning  opposite,^  but  I  come  to  so  few 
endings." 

"Florence,  October  9. — Frightful  noise  under  window  till  twelve 
last  night  —  of  returning  carriages  of  Sunday  excursions.^  —  and 
thunder  again  at  five,  have  left  me  good  for  little  this  morning, 
but  pleased  in  thought  of  buying  for  Sheffield  the  lovely  book  of 
drawings  of  Italian  peasants  by  Miss  Alexander.  Planned  also,  I 
think  finally,  as  I  lay  awake  during  the  thunder,  the  tenor  of 
lecture  to  London  Institution,  in  revision  of  my  teaching  about 
myths,2  and  that  of  my  address  to  Edinburgh  students  ^  on  essential 
principles  of  moral  philosophy,  taking  Shakespeare  and  Scott  for 
principal  guides." 

"Florence,  October  10. — Yesterday  up  to  Fesole  and  found  it 
quite  uninjured,  except  restoration  of  Duomo,  which  did  not  matter. 
All  the  view  of  Florence  in  lovely  sunshine,  and  beyond  everything 
I  ever  remembered  :  certainly  the  view  of  all  the  world." 

^  A  collection  and  arrangement  of  the  texts  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of  refer- 
ring to  as  including  most  briefly  the  teaching  of  the  Bible." 

2  The  lecture  which  Ruskin  next  gave  at  the  London  Institution  was  on 
Cistercian  Architecture "  (see  below,  pp.  227  seq.)  ;  but  it  contains  only  passing 
references  to  myths  (§  8)  and  miracles  (§  11). 

^  Probably,  an  address  which  he  thought  of  giving  to  the  Associated  Societies 
of  the  University  of  Edinburgh:  see  a  letter  of  February  8,  1882,  printed  in 
Vol.  XXXIV. 


xlii 


INTRODUCTION 


The  visit  to  Florence  was  chiefly  important  to  Ruskin  as  the  occasion 
of  his  making  acquaintance,  which  ripened  rapidly  into  the  warmest 
friendship,  with  Miss  Francesca  Alexander  and  her  mother.^  But  he 
had  to  return  to  Lucca— to  meet  Mr.  E.  R.  Robson  for  the  discussion 
of  plan>s  for  the  St.  George's  Museum,'^  and  to  finish  his  drawings  of 
the  Duomo.    The  diary  contains  many  entries  about  these: — 

"Lucca,  Sunday,  October  15.— Yesterday  began  new  drawing  of 
delicate  pillar.  Could  only  buy  cheese  and  hunt  for  honey  in  after- 
noon of  crashing  rain:  shelter  in  St.  Michael  during  the  worst. 
Examined  views  from  ramparts  in  evening;  ascertained  that  there's 
really  only  one  available — of  the  town,  from  the  south  gate,  west 
round  to  St.  Frediano.  The  tanneries  and  cotton-mills,  where  the 
girls  sing  in  a  milly,  cicadesque,  incomprehensible  manner,  continu- 
ally spoil  the  north-west  side.  An  old  priest  standing  to  hear  them 
— thinking,  I  would  give  much  to  know  what ! " 

''LuccA,  October  18. — Yesterday  got  on  with  arches,  and  had 
lovely  afternoon  walk  on  hills  beyond  Serchio,  with  skies  bright  and 
sublime,  changing  continually,  and  warm  sun  and  sweet  air,  and 
vignettes  of  new  and  perfect  composition  in  Italian  villa  and 
mountain,  every  moment." 

'^LuccA,  October  25. — Yesterday  worked  very  hard  on  pillar,  and 
had  nice  little  chat  with  two  contadine,  explaining  my  drawing  and 
the  cathedral  front  to  them ;  one,  presently  (middle-aged,  unfortu- 
nately, or  more  than  middle),  had  her  arm  round  my  neck  in  her 
eagerness  to  know  if  I  was  going  to  draw  the  entire  front.  And 
the  day  before  yesterday  a  pretty  young  housewife  gave  me  a  grace- 
ful good-day  in  passing  up  the  steps  before  me." 

Unlike  some  sketchers,  Ruskin,  it  seems,  "rather  enjoyed  an  audience, 
and  sometimes  used  to  bring  back  odd  gleanings  of  their  remarks 
when  he  came  in  to  luncheon.  He  used  to  sit  in  quaint  attitudes  on 
his  camp-stool  in  the  square,  manipulating  his  drawing-board  with  one 
hand  and  his  paint-brush  with  the  other-  Baxter,  his  valet,  holding 
the  colour-box  for  him  to  dip  into,  and  a  little  crowd  of  chatterers 
looking  on.""  2 

Having  at  last  finished  his  drawings,  Ruskin  returned  to  Florence 
to  bid  good-bye  to  the  Alexanders  and  Mr.  Newman,  and  then,  after 
a  day  or  two  more  at  Lucca,  he  went  on  to  Pisa  to  meet  Signor 

1  See  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  xxii. 
«  See  Vol.  XXX.  p.  xlvii. 

'  Ruskin  Relics,  p.  93.  Compare  what  Ruskin  himself  says  in  Prceterita,  ii. 
§§  122,  123.  ^ 


INTRODUCTION 


xliii 


Boni  and  Signer  Alessandri.  They  are  "the  two  lads,"  though  indeed 
"not  exactly  lads  perhaps,"  in  whose  friendship  and  work  Riiskin 
expressed  his  pride  in  the  first  of  the  Oxford  lectures  given  in  the 
following  year.^  Commendatore  Boni,  who  was  already  "master  of  the 
work  in  the  Ducal  Palace  at  Venice,"  did  work  for  Buskin  at  Pisa,  in 
the  measurement  of  various  buildings,  and  some  of  his  architectural 
sketches  may  be  seen  at  Oxford ;  with  Signor  Alessandri's  work,  readers 
of  this  edition  are  already  familiar.^  Buskin  himself  was  busy  at  Pisa 
in  sketching  the  Baptistery,  and  mapping  out  his  lecture  on  Cistercian 
Architecture. 

Buskin  had  planned  a  visit  on  the  way  home  to  the  Sagredo  di 
San  Michele ;  ^  but  his  watchful  secretary  thought  it  would  be  bleak  for 
a  man  with  a  bad  cold,  and  took  tickets  for  Aix-les-Bains  instead. 
"  I  felt  particularly  guilty,"  says  Mr.  Collingwood,  "  as  he  recounted 
to  me,  in  an  injured  tone,  the  horrors  of  Aix,  the  one  place  he  abomi- 
nated, and  the  beauties  of  St.  Michel."  But  the  diary  shows  that 
Buskin  altogether  relented  towards  Aix: — 

"Aix-les-Bains,  Sunday,  November  12. — The  cold's  quite  gone! 
Friday  in  glowing  sunshine,  Pisa  to  Turin.  Saturday  in  frightful 
damp  and  cold,  Turin  to  Aix.  But  quite  easy  days  both ;  and  it  is 
delightful  to  think  how  pleasant  both  will  be  to  do  back  again ; 
running  from  Dijon  straight  here  would  make  just  four  days  from 
Paris  to  Pisa.  Sun  coming  out  now.  Dent  de  Bourget,  over  mist 
and  low  cloud,  very  lovely  as  I  dressed." 

From  Aix  Buskin  retreated  to  Annecy,  and  the  next  entry  in  the 
diary  shows  that  he  was  not  always  inaccessible  to  the  charm  of 
railway-train  landscape  which  Louis  Stevenson  and  many  others 
have  felt :  4— 

"(Annecy,  November  13.) — Yesterday  an  entirely  divine  railway 
coupe  drive  from  Aix  by  the  river  gorges — one  enchantment  of 
golden  trees  and  ruby  hills." 

Deprived  of  his  sanctuary  of  San  Michele,  Buskin  took  refuge — close 
to  Menthon,  the  birthplace  of  St.  Bernard,  "  the  Apostle  of  the  Alps  " — 
in  an  old  Benedictine  abbey  on  the  Lake  of  Annecy,  turned  into  an 

1  Art  0/  England,  §  18  (below,  p.  278). 

2  See  Vol.  XXX. 

3  For  an  account  of  his  visit  to  the  Sanctuary  in  1858,  see  Vol.  VII.  p.  xliv. 
*  See,  too,  the  entry  above,  p.  xxiv. 


xliv 


INTRODUCTION 


i„„_the  Hotel  de  TAbbaye  at  Talloires ;  and  there  in  wretched 
weather  he  shut  himself  up  to  finish  the  lecture  on  Cistercian  Archi- 
tecture. A  letter  written  to  Miss  Allen  at  this  time  contains  references 
to  the  lecture,  and  shows  how  his  work  followed  him  on  his  travels  :— 

"{Sovcmher  22,  1882.)— My  dear  Gracie,— I  send  you  193-208 
for  press.i  There  are  some  important  alterations  in  notes,  but  no 
more  than  you  can  easily  revise  for  me — with  the  section  and  chapter 
numbers.  I  go  to-morrow  to  Geneva,  where  I  expect  more  work 
from  you ;  but  whatever  you  now  send  should  be  to  Hotel  Meurice, 
Paris,  where  I  hope  for  a  quiet  day  next  Wednesday,  and  shall  get 
anything  safely,  posted  on  Wednesday.  You  may  send  all  you  can, 
in  case  I  am  stopped  by  weather  at  Boulogne. 

"  I  have  not  yet  acknowledged  Hugh's  lettered  plate  of  lightning.2 
I  am  delighted  with  his  careful  imitation  of  my  rude  retouching,  and 
with  the  plate  altogether.  The  text  is  all  ready,  nearly — if  I 
could  only  get  time  to  retouch  the  8th  chapter,  but  I  can't  till  this 
lecture's  over. 

For  which  I  want  Hugh's  help,  or  Papa's,  if  Hugh  feels  diffident 
about  large  work.  I  want  two  diagrams,  each  six  feet  long,  made 
from  the  two  sketches  I  send  by  this  post.  There  is  no  need  what- 
ever for  any  laborious  imitation  of  my  touches  or  colour,  but  only 
for  careful  enlarging  of  the  lines  to  scale  and  rough  colour  to  match. 
The  more  finished  one  is  the  masonry  of  a  bit  of  the  walls  of  Fesole ; 
the  other,  the  cleavages  of  a  bit  of  the  rock  on  which  and  of  which 
they  are  built,  seen  looking  down  on  it.  The  connection  of  this 
discovery  of  mine  with  Cistercian  Architecture  is  not  immediately 
obvious ;  but  I've  managed  to  dig  down  to  it,  partly  because  I  want 
to  air  the  discovery!  partly  because  I  like  to  begin  at  the  begin- 
ning of  things,  even  if  I  can't  quite  end  at  the  end. 

"The  diagrams  must  be  rolled  and  kept  out  of  sight  till  I  want 
to  show  them,  and  they  must  be  so  arranged  as  to  be  seen,  when 
they  arc  shown,  side  by  side — the  finished  one  first,  on  the  right  of 
the  audience ;  the  cleavages,  secondly,  on  the  left — as  introductory 
to  the  wall,  and  reading  and  leading  up  to  it. — Ever,  my  dear  Gracie, 
very  gratefully  and  affectionately  yours, 

"J.  R." 

The  diagrams  were  duly  prepared  by  Mr.  George  Allen,  but  they  were 
not  shown  at  the  lecture,  nor  are  they  now  discoverable,  though  the 
subject  of  them  was  referred  to  (see  below,  p.  246  n,). 

Driven  from  Talloires  presently  by  cold  and  rain,  Ruskin  returned 

^  Proof-sheets  of  the  separate  edition  of  the  second  volume  of  Modern  Painters. 
2  Plate  XXI.  in  Deucalion :  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  359. 


INTRODUCTION 


xlv 


to  Annecy  and  Geneva,  and  thence  rapidly  home,  reaching  Herne  Hill 
on  December  2,  and  writing  in  his  diary  next  day: — 

"  Slept  well,  and  hope  to  be  fit  for  lecture  to-morrow ;  very 
happy  in  showing  our  drawings,  and  complete  sense  of  rest  after 
three  months'  tossing." 

The  lecture — included  in  this  volume  (pp.  227-249) — was  a  great 
success.  "Ruskin  flourishes/'  wrote  Burne-Jones  to  Professor  Norton — 
"gave  a  lecture  on  Cistercian  Architecture  the  other  day  that  was 
like  most  ancient  times,  and  of  his  very  best,  and  looks  well — 
really  looks  stronger  than  for  many  a  year  past.  The  hair  that  he 
has  grown  over  his  mouth  hides  that  often  angry  feature,  and  his 
eyes  look  gentle  and  invite  the  unwary,  who  could  never  guess  the 
dragon  that  lurks  in  the  bush  below."  ^  The  foreign  tour  had  been  in 
every  way  a  success.  It  was  the  occasion,  as  we  have  seen,  of  recall- 
ing many  pleasant  impressions,  which  were  presently  to  be  embodied 
in  one  of  the  most  charming  of  all  his  books.  It  was  on  this  tour, 
also,  that  he  made  some  of  his  best  and  furthest-carried  drawings. 
Two  of  them,  of  details  from  the  fa9ade  of  the  cathedral  at  Lucca 
(San  Martino),  are  well  known.  One  was  at  the  "Old  Masters"  Ex- 
hibition at  the  Academy  in  1901,  and  the  other  at  the  Royal  Water- 
Colour  Society's  Ruskin  Exhibition  in  the  same  year ;  and  both  were 
shown  at  the  Fine  Art  Society's  rooms  in  1907.  Nor,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  the  period  of  the  tour  inactive  in  literary  work.  But  the  principal 
significance  of  the  tour  in  the  story  of  his  life  is  that  it  so  restored 
his  health  and  spirits  as  to  induce  him  to  resume  his  former  work  at 
Oxford. 

Ill 

"  Before  re-crossing  the  Alps,"  Ruskin  says,  "  I  had  formed  the 
hope  of  returning  to  my  duties  at  Oxford."^  He  took  steps  to  let  his 
willingness  to  resume  the  Slade  Professorship  of  Fine  Art  be  known. 
His  friend  Sir  William  Richmond,  whose  tenure  of  the  oflSce  had  not  yet 
expired,  thereupon  resigned,  and  in  January  1883  Ruskin  was  re-elected.^ 
'^Yesterday  at  evening,"  he  wrote  in  his  diary  (January  17,  1883), 
"came  Acland's  telegram,  announcing  reinstated  Professorship:  'Dear 
Friend,  may  all  good  attend  you  and  your  work  in  this  new  condition ; 

^  Memorials  of  Edward  Bume-Jones,  vol.  ii.  p.  133. 
*  Introduction  to  The  Limestone  Alps  of  Savoy,  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  571. 
'  His  re-election  was  the  subject  of  some  complimentary  verses  in  Punch, 
January  27,  1883. 


xlvi  INTRODUCTION 

once  a-ain  welcome  to  Alma  Mater.'"  The  telegram  reached  him  at 
lhantwood,  and  within  a  few  days  he  had  begun  making  notes  for 
the  course  of  lectures  on  The  Art  of  England} 

In  the  Lent  Term,  liowever,  he  delivered  only  the  first  lecture- 
on  Hossetti  and  Holman  Hunt.  The  second  was  to  be  on  Burne- Jones, 
and  he  went  up  to  London  to  refresh  his  impressions  of  the  body  of 
his  friend's  work  : — 

want  to  come,"  he  wrote  (March,  1883),  "and  see  all  the 
pictures  you've  got,  and  to  have  a  Hst  of  all  you've  done!  The 
next  lecture  at  Oxford  is  to  be  about  you— and  I  want  to  reckon 
you  up,  and  it's  like  counting  clouds."  ^ 

Burne-Jones  was  very  happy  about  it,  but  "forebodings  as  of  the 
approach  of  doomsday  are  upon  me,"  he  said : — 

"It's  lovely,"  replied  Ruskin  (March  14),  "to  think  of  your 
heing  in  that  retributive  torment.  I  shan't  tell  you  a  word  of 
what  I'm  going  to  say !  Mind  you  don't  miss  any  of  the  foolish 
things  out  of  the  hst,  as  I'm  sure  to  find  it  out.  I'll  come  on 
Friday  afternoon." 

It  was  at  this  time  that  Ruskin  begged  his  friend  to  design  for  him 
a  gold  cross  for  his  May  Day  Festival  at  Whitelands :  ^ — 

"The  cross,"  be  wrote  in  the  same  letter,  "is  always  of  pure 
gold ;  it  may  be  any  shape  you  like,  but  it  must  be  liawthorn, 
because  it  is  for  the  1st  May,  when  they  choose  a  May  Queen  at 
Whitelands,  the  girl  they  love  best,  and  I  give  her  the  hawthorn 
cross,  annually,  and  a  whole  lot  of  my  books  to  give  away  to  the 
girls  she  likes  best." 

Ruskin  w^as  delighted  with  the  cross,  and  on  May  Day  he  wrote : — 

"I  have,  yesterday,  finished  ^oz^r  lecture,  for  12th  May;  but  I 
found,  of  course,  that  there  was  no  possibility  of  giving  any  abstract 
of  you  in  one  lecture,  nor  without  unbalancing  the  conditions  of 
general  review.  So  this  is  merely  the  sketched  ground  of  what  I 
hope  at  length  to  say  in  future." 

*  He  allowed  himself  also  to  be  nominated  a  second  time  for  the  Lord  Rector- 
ship of  Glasgow  University.  He  had  the  usual  fate  of  independent  candidates, 
ana  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  poll.  The  figures  were :  Fawcett  (Liberal),  707 ; 
Marquis  of  Bute  (Conservative),  670  ;  Ruskin,  319. 

2  See  Memorials  of  Edward  Bunie-Joites,  vol.  ii.  pp.  130,  131,  for  this  and  tlie 
following  letters. 

See  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  336. 


INTRODUCTION 


xlvii 


The  lecture  was  delivered  on  May  12 ;  two  others  followed  it ;  and  after 
them  Ruskin  stayed  on  for  some  weeks  at  Oxford,  teaching  in  the 
drawing-school.  He  had  gone  up  to  London  to  give  the  private  lecture 
(June  5),  mainly  on  Miss  Alexander's  drawings,  of  which  a  report  is 
printed  in  the  preceding  volume.^  On  the  following  day  he  attended  a 
performance  of  the  Tale  of  Troy,  and  made  a  speech  at  its  conclusion.^ 
From  Oxford  he  went  to  Worcester — a  tour  mentioned  in  one  of 
the  undelivered  lectures  included  in  this  volume  ;2  and  thence  by  Llan- 
gollen to  Brant  wood.  During  his  summer  at  home  he  received  many 
old  friends ;  among  them  were  Mr.  and  Mrs.  La  Touche  and  Professor 
Norton,  who  has  given  his  impression  on  seeing  Ruskin  again  after  an 
interval  of  ten  years : — 

''I  had  left  him  in  1873  a  man  in  vigorous  middle  life,  young  for  his 
years,  erect  in  figure,  alert  in  action,  full  of  vitality,  with  smooth  face  and 
untired  eyes.  I  found  him  an  old  man,  with  look  even  older  than  his 
years,  with  bent  form,  with  the  beard  of  a  patriarch,  with  habitual  expres- 
sion of  weariness,  with  the  general  air  and  gait  of  age.  But  there  were 
all  the  old  affection  and  tenderness ;  the  worn  look  readily  gave  way  to 
the  old  animation,  the  delightful  smile  quickly  kindled  into  full  warmth ; 
occasionally  the  unconquerable  youthfulness  of  temperament  reasserted 
itself  with  entire  control  of  manner  and  expression,  and  there  were  hours 
when  the  old  gaiety  of  mood  took  possession  of  him  with  its  irresistible 
charm.  He  had  become,  indeed,  more  positive,  more  absolute  in  manner, 
more  irritable,  but  the  essential  sw^eetness  prevailed.  Given  his  circum- 
stances, no  ordering  of  life  could  have  been  more  happy  for  him  than  that 
at  Brantwood.  His  cousin,  Mrs.  Severn,  was  at  the  head  of  his  household, 
and  the  best  of  daughters  could  not  have  been  more  dear  and  devoted  to 
him.  Her  children  kept  the  atmosphere  of  the  home  fresh  and  bright; 
the  home  itself  was  delightful,  beautiful  within  with  innumerable  treasures 
of  art,  and  surrounded  without  by  all  the  beauties  of  one  of  the  fairest 
scenes  of  the  English  lake  country."^ 

1  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  535. 

2  ''Mr.  Ruskin,  now  seldom  seen  in  public,  watched  this  last  representation 
with  evident  interest  and  frequent  applause,  and  at  the  fall  of  the  curtain  consented 
to  join  the  corps  dramatique  in  the  green-room,  and  present  Mr.  George  Alexander 
with  their  testimonial  to  his  stage-management.  Mr,  Ruskin,  who  always  seems 
able  to  say  the  best  thing  at  the  shortest  notice,  made  a  brief  but  excellent  speech, 
and,  with  a  few  kindly  words  to  the  donee  himself,  handed  him  the  book — a 
Shakespeare — as  'the  guide  to  all  that  is  noblest  and  truest  in  English  thought'" 
{World,  June  13,  1883).  For  a  reference  to  the  performance,  see  Vol.  XXX, 
p.  328. 

3  Below,  p.  511. 

*  Letters  of  John  Ruskin  to  C.  E.  Norton,  vol.  ii.  p.  165. 


xlviii 


INTRODUCTION 


Kuskin\s  diary  bears  out  on  many  a  page  what  Professor  Norton  here 
savs  of  Hiiskin's  happiness  with  the  cousin  who  kept  house  for  him  at 
Hrantwood.  Two  entries  of  the  present  date  (1884)  are  typical  of 
many : — 

''Greatly  enjoyed  cataloguing  with  Joan"  (July  13). 

"  I  never  passed  a  healthier  or  much  happier  day  than  yesterday 
(July  15),  arranging  coins  with  Joan,  seeing  windhovers  on  moor, 
taking  Joan  up  to  see  anagallis  in  evening."  ^ 

The  visit  to  Llangollen,  mentioned  above,  was  made  in  connexion 
with  the  literary  work  which  was  now  occupying  a  large  share  in 
Ruskin's  thoughts  and  studies.  "Getting  on  with  my  history," 
"  seeing  into  the  Benedictines,''  "  reading  marvellous  passages  by  Mont- 
alemberf'  are  entries  in  his  diary  of  the  time  (June  25,  July  18, 
1883).  They  refer  to  the  studies  in  the  History  and  Architecture  of 
Early  Christianity,  which  he  had  announced  as  being  in  preparation  to 
follow  The  Bible  of  Amiens.  One  of  these  other  volumes  in  the  pro- 
jected series  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us,  the  sixth,  was  to  treat, 
as  we  have  seen,  of  monastic  architecture,  and  to  be  called  Valle  Crucis. 
He  went  therefore  to  Llangollen  to  renew  his  knowledge  of  Valle 
Crucis  Abbey;  and  later  in  the  year  he  took  occasion  of  the  visit  to 
Scotland,  which  has  been  referred  to  in  an  earlier  Introduction,^  to 
visit  the  scene  of  St.  Ninian's  foundation. 

Early  in  October  Ruskin  was  again  in  Oxford,  delivering  the  last 
two  of  his  lectures  on  The  Art  of  England  and  attending  in  his  draw- 
ing-school. On  his  return  to  Brantwood  he  gave  the  lecture  on  Sir 
Herbert  Edwardes,  which  was  afterwards  expanded  into  A  Knighfs 
FaithJ 

He  did  not  again  reside  in  Oxford  till  the  Michaelmas  Term  of 
1884,  but  he  kept  in  touch  with  the  drawing-school  by  sending  in- 
structions and  exercises  through  Mr.  Macdonald.  Meanwhile  he  was 
as  busy  as  ever,  or  busier.  In  February  he  came  up  to  London  and 
delivered,  with  full  vigour,  two  lectures  on  The  Storm-Clond,  He 
also  gave  an  informal  address  to  some  girl-students  of  the  Royal 
Academy.*  He  worked  at  the  British  Museum  in  arranging  his 
Cabinet  of  Silicas  there.^    A  few  weeks  later  he  was  called  to  London 

*  See  also  the  extracts  given  above,  p.  xxii. 

2  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  xxvi.    See  also  PrcBterita,  iii.  S  70. 
'  See  Vol.  XXXI. 

*  Referred  to  in  the  letters  beloM^  A  report  of  the  address  is  ffiven  in 
Vol.  XXXIV.  ^  ^ 

^  See  Vol.  XXVI.  pp.  395  seq. 


INTRODUCTION 


xlix 


again,  in  order  to  pay  a  visit  of  condolence  to  the  Duchess  of  Albany, 
whose  husband  was  buried  on  April  5.  When  at  Brantwood  he 
wrote  the  Introduction  to  Mr.  Collingwood'*s  Liinestone  Alps.  He  was 
full  of  schemes  for  work  in  which  Miss  Greenaway  and  he  were  to 
co-operate.  He  was  in  correspondence  about  a  Life  of  Turner,  for 
which  he  was  to  arrange  materials,  with  M.  Chesneau.  He  was  bring- 
ing out  the  Roadside  Songs,  writing  a  catalogue  for  a  collection  of 
minerals  at  Kirkcudbright,  throwing  off  an  occasional  number  of  Fors 
Clavigera,  and  doing  many  bye-things  besides.  Mr.  Collingwood  has 
printed  extracts  from  letters  received  at  Brantwood  while  Ruskin  was 
in  London  in  the  early  part  of  1884,  which  give  a  lively  account  of 
his  daily  doings: — 

^'I  want  to  know  all  about  the  bells,i  and  what  the  children  [at 
the  school]  are  making  of  them :  I  bought  the  compass  (seaman's 
on  card),  and  another  of  needle,  for  the  big  school,  yesterday ;  and 
another  on  card  for  the  infants,  and  I  want  to  know  how  the  bricks 
get  on.    What  a  blessed  time  it  takes  to  get  anything  done  ! 

"1  had  rather  a  day  of  it  yesterday.  Into  National  Gallery  by 
half-past  eleven — went  all  over  it,  noting  things  for  lecture  to  the 
Academy  girls  on  Saturday.  Then  a  nice  half-hour  in  a  toy-shop, 
buying  toys  for  the  cabman's  daughter  [Miss  Greenaway's  little 
model] — kaleidoscope,  magnetic  fish,  and  skipping  rope.  Out  to 
Hollo  way — sate  for  my  portrait  to  K.  G.^ — cabman's  daughter  at 
four — had  tea,  muffins,  magnetic  fishing,  skipping,  and  a  game  at 
marbles.  Back  across  town  to  Sanger's  Amphitheatre  over  West- 
minster Bridge.  Saw  pretty  girl  ride  haute  ecole,  and  beginning  of 
pantomime,  but  pantomime  too  stupid  ;  so  I  came  away  at  half-past 
ten,  walked  a  mile  homewards  in  the  moonlight — shower  coming 

on  took  cab  up  the  hill,  and  had  pretty    to  boil  eggs  for  my 

supper. 

"  I  really  shall  be  rather  sorry  to  leave  town  ;  but  there's  some- 
thing to  be  said  for  the  country,  too.  .  .  . 

"Please  find  a  catalogue  of  108  or  110  minerals,  written  by  me, 
of  my  case  at  the  British  Museum.  You'll  easily  guess  which  it  is 
among  the  MSS.  in  top  drawer  of  study  book-case,  west  side,  far- 
thest from  fire.  I  want  it  here  by  Monday,  for  I'm  going  on  Tues- 
day to  have  a  long  day  at  the  case.  They're  going  to  exhibit  the 
two  diamonds  and  ruby  on  loan,^  the  first  time  they've  done  so. 


1  See  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  95,  §  9  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  500). 

2  This  portrait  was  never  completed. 

3  He  ultimately  presented  them  :  see  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  Iv. 
XXXIII.  d 


1 


INTRODUCTION 


"  I  had  rather  a  day  of  it  yesterday.  Out  at  half-past  ten, 
to  china-shop  in  Grosvenor  Place  and  glass-shop  in  Palace  Road. 
Bought  coffee-  and  tea-cups  for  Academy  girls  to-morrow,  and  a  blue 
bottle  for  myself.  Then  to  Boehm's,  and  ordered  twelve  medallions: 
flattest  bas-relief  size-of-life  profiles,  chosen  British  types — six  men 
and  six  girls.  Then  to  Kensington  Museum,  and  made  notes  for 
to-morrow's  lecture.  Then  to  British  Museum,  and  worked  for  two 
hours  arranging  agates.  Then  into  city,  and  heard  Mr.  Gale's 
lecture  on  British  Sports  at  London  Institution.  Then  home  to 
supper,  and  exhibited  crockery  and  read  my  letters  before  going 
to  bed. 

"  But  I'm  rather  sleepy  this  afternoon — however,  I'm  going  to 
the  Princess's  to  see  Claudian  ^  (by  the  actor's  request) — hope  I  shan't 
fall  asleep. 

"  What  is  the  world  coming  to  }    I  wish  I  could  stay  to  see  !  " 

He  had  recovered  his  strength,  but  he  was  spending  it  fast.  He 
enjoyed  the  pursuit,  but  it  sometimes  left  him  breathless.  "  Quite 
bright  always,'*''  he  wrote  in  the  diary  (May  26) ;  "  I  wonderfully  well, 
and  slept  well ;  but  to-day  trembling  and  nervous  with  too  much  on 
my  mind — all  pleasant ;  but  Minerals,  Turner's  life,  the  Saints,  and 
Oxford    Lectures,  with  instant  Proserpina  —  five  subjects,  like  this, 

^  ^  with  poor  me  in  the  middle.""     He  was  sixty-five,  but  he  was 

still  up  at  sunrise  in  the  mornings ;  and  St.  Sebastian  called  only 
for  more  arrows !  "  Bolton  [Turner's  drawing]  so  bright  in  last  night's 
sunset !  What  shall  I  do,"  he  asks  himself  (June  29),  "  with  all  my 
powers  and  havings,  still  left.-^"  Why,  launch  out  on  new  Mork,  to  be 
sure!  "Planned  more  work  on  pretty  things"  (July  2).  "Planned 
much  this  morning  (July  12) — Grammar  of  Adamant,  Grammar  of 
Sapphire,  Grammar  of  Flint,  Grammar  of  Ice."^  He  had  pleasant 
visitors  in  the  later  summer — Mrs.  La  Touche,  again,  and  Professor 
Norton,  and  Mrs.  Burn e- Jones,  with  her  daughter,  and  Mr.  Fletcher, 
keeper  of  the  minerals  at  the  British  Museum.  Jowett,  too,  then 
Vice-Chancellor  of  the  University,  came  to  stay.  Jowett's  appreciation 
of  his  host  has  already  been  cited,^  and  the  pleasure  was  mutual. 
"  Vice-Chancellor  came  yesterday,"  he  notes  (Septen)ber  10) — "  very 
nice;"  and  again  (September  12),  "Yesterday  most  pleasant  walk  with 
Vice-Chancellor."    But,  meanwhile,  his  lectures  for  the  ensuing  term 


1  See  Vol.  XXXIV. 

2  See  Vol.  XXVL 

3  Vol.  XVIII.  pp.  Ix.-lxi. 


INTRODUCTION 


li 


at  Oxford  were  in  arrear,  and  this  was  to  be  a  cause  of  much  trouble 
in  the  immediate  future. 

Of  the  manner  and  reception  of  his  earlier  Oxford  lectures,  an 
account  has  been  given  in  an  earlier  volume.  The  lectures  of  his  second 
professorship  excited  even  greater  interest  in  the  University.  The 
notices  reprinted  from  the  University  Gazette  in  the  Bibliographical 
Note  (p.  259)  show  that  Ruskin's  re-election  to  the  professorship  was 
expected  to  draw  large  audiences  to  his  lecture-room.  And  so  it 
proved  to  be.  There  were  overflowing  audiences,  and  the  lectures 
were  largely  reported  in  the  press.^  The  first  course — on  The  Art  of 
England — had  been  carefully  written;  it  was  indeed  from  the  text 
already  printed  that  he  read  the  lectures;  in  their  delivery  he  allowed 
himself  comparatively  few  extempore  asides,  and  the  lectures  were  re- 
strained in  tone  and  closely  restricted  in  scope.  With  the  second 
course,  which  he  entitled  The  Pleasures  of  England^  it  all  went  very 
differently;  and  as  the  lectures  proceeded,  the  strain  of  lecturing 
without  full  preparation,  the  controversial  nature  of  the  thoughts  in 
his  mind,  the  stimulus  of  the  crowded  lecture-room,  the  remonstrances 
of  his  friends,  and  some  disputes  then  current  in  the  University,  com- 
bined to  work  Ruskin  up  into  a  dangerous  state  of  excitement. 

During  the  term  at  Oxford,  sufficiently  exciting  in  itself,  Ruskin 
made  occasional  visits  to  London.  He  breakfasted  sometimes  with 
Leighton,  with  whom  he  was  co-operating  in  the  collection  of  draw- 
ings by  Turner,  with  which  the  new  water-colour  gallery  at  the 
Royal  Academy  was  to  be  opened  at  the  forthcoming  "  Old  Masters 
exhibition.    Some  correspondence  on  this  subject  will  be  found  in  a 

^  An  account  of  one  of  tlie  lectures  gives  a  vivid  idea  of  the  impression  made 
by  them  on  Ruskin's  more  emotional  hearers:  A  lecture  theatre  crowded  from 
floor  to  ceiling  by  an  audience  unusually  representative ;  youth  and  maiden,  matron 
and  scholar,  artist  and  scientist,  all  pressed  shoulder  to  shoulder,  listening  with  a 
hushed  intensity  almost  trance-like  ;  their  common  gaze  focussed  upon  the  gracious, 
stooping  figure  of  the  lecturer — who,  golden-voiced,  witli  flowing  gown  flung  back 
from  eager,  nervous  hands,  hands  ever  moving  in  suppressed  gesticulation,  stood 
in  the  waning  sunshine  of  that  wintry  afternoon  telling  us  brave  things  of  art  in 
this  our  England.  There  was  no  pomp  of  rhetoric,  no  throwing  down  of  con- 
troversy's glove  ;  the  quiet  voice,  almost  monotonous,  in  measured  cadence,  held 
the  attention  by  virtue  of  its  message,  not  by  means  of  any  varied  or  dramatic 
inflection.  And  even  as  his  voice  held  heart  and  mind,  so  were  our  eyes  rested 
and  refreshed  by  his  presence — that  dignified,  gentle  presence,  so  worthy  of  all 
reverence  in  its  unfailing  courtesy  and  crystalline  earnestness.  I'here  remained 
but  few  words  of  the  lecture,  but  who  that  heard  those  closing  words,  spoken  in 
triumphant  sincerity,  will  ever  forget  them  ?  .  .  .  The  grave  benedictory  voice  died 
away  into  an  unbroken  silence.  Then  a  girl,  sitting  hand  in  hand  with  her  lover, 
gave  a  little  sob,  and  the  great  audience  loosed  its  pent-up  enthusiasm."  (^'^  Happy 
Memories  of  John  Ruskin,"  by  L.  Allen  Harker,  in  The  Puritan,  May  1900.) 
Another  account  to  like  efi'ect  was  printed  in  The  Beview  of  the  Week,  March  29, 
1901. 


lii 


INTRODUCTION 


later  volume.  Riiskin  also,  during  these  visits  to  London,  saw  much 
of  Froude,  whose  Life  of  Carljle  had  just  been  completed.  The  feud 
between  two  of  his  friends  which  raged  in  this  connexion  was  a  source 
of  jnuch  distress  to  Ruskin ;  his  sympathies  were  on  the  whole,  as  we 
shall  see  from  correspondence  in  a  later  volume,  with  Froude  and  not 
with  Professor  Norton. 

The  crush  on  the  occasion  of  the  second  course  was  as  great  as 
before.  A  letter,  written  to  a  girl  who  had  asked  for  a  ticket,  has 
been  published,  which  is  typical  of  Ruskin's  pretty  way  of  saying 
things : — 

"  I  wonder  if  you're  little  enough  to  go  in  ray  breast  pocket ! 
I  don't  in  the  least  know  how  else  to  get  you  in.  For  I've  made 
a  Medo-Persic-Arabic-Moorish-Turkish  law  that  no  strangers  nor  pil- 
grims are  to  get  into  the  lectures  at  all,  but  only  Oxford  residents, 
and  even  so  they  can't  all  get  in  that  want  to.  Look  here,  the 
first  lecture,  which  is  next  Saturday,  will  be  rather  dull,  but  if  you 
could  come  on  Saturday  the  25th,  I  would  take  you  in  myself  under 
my  gown,  and  get  you  into  a  corner."  ^ 

The  scope  of  this  second  course  was  very  wide,  being  nothing  less 
than  a  sketch  of  the  tendencies  of  national  life  and  character  as 
shown  in  "The  Pleasures  of  England"  during  centuries  of  her  history. 
There  was  here  nothing  to  check  the  range  of  his  discursiveness,  or 
restrain  the  violence  of  his  feelings,  and  he  let  himself  go  freely. 
The  first  two  lectures  were  in  type  before  the  course  began,  and 
in  these  the  line  of  thought  was  clear.  Two  more,  which  had  not 
been  completely  written,  were  yet  prepared,  though  the  asides  became 
more  and  more  frequent.  He  allowed  himself  greater  license  in  collo- 
quial banter  even  than  was  usual  with  him  in  his  Oxford  lectures.  The 
digressions  and  interpolations  sometimes  contained  passages  of  serious 
and  telling  eloquence.  I  remember  one  such  in  the  lecture  on  "The 
Pleasures  of  Faith,"  when  he  turned  aside  from  his  manuscript  notes 
to  refer  to  General  Gordon  as  a  Latter-day  Saint  whose  life  still 
illustrates  the  age  of  faith.  We  are  too  much  in  the  habit,  he 
had  been  saying,  of  "supposing  that  temporal  success  is  owing  either 
to  worldly  chance  or  to  worldly  prudence,  and  is  never  granted  in 
any  visible  relation  to  states  of  religious  temper" — as  if  the  whole 
story  of  the  world,  read  in  the  light  of  Christian  faith,  did  not 
show  "  a  vividly  real  yet  miraculous  tenour "  in  the  contrary  direction ! 
"  But  what  need,"  Ruskin  broke  off  to  say,  "  to  go  back  to  the  story 


•  "  Happy  Memories  of  John  Ruskin,"  as  cited  above. 


INTRODUCTION 


liii 


of  the  world  when  you  can  see  the  same  evidence  in  the  history  of 
to-day — in  the  lives  and  characters  of  men  like  Havelock  and  Gordon  ?  "  ^ 
Often,  too,  he  would  lay  aside  his  manuscript  at  some  important 
point,  and  giving  free  play  to  his  feelings,  drive  it  home  in  burning 
passages  of  extempore  irony.  But  at  other  times  there  was  a  lack  of 
restraint. 

He  was  behindhand,  as  I  have  said,  with  the  preparation  of  his 
lectures,  and  sometimes  he  could  not  even  get  through  the  regulation 
hour  by  Charles  Lamb's  expedient  of  making  up  for  beginning  late  by 
ending  early.  I  remember  one  occasion  during  the  course  when  he 
found  some  difficulty  in  eking  out  the  time,  even  with  the  help  of 
copious  extracts  from  himself  and  Carlyle ;  but  he  kept  his  audience  in 
good  humour  by  confessing  to  some  "bad  shots'"  in  previous  lectures;  by 
telling  them  that  all  pretty  girls  were  angels;  by  abusing  "the  beastly 
hooter"'  that  woke  them  every  morning,  and  assuring  them  that,  in 
spite  of  appearances,  he  "really  was  not  humbugging  them.'' 

The  popularity  of  the  lectures,  the  applause,  the  excitement,  were 
in  no  way  diminished — perhaps,  as  an  undergraduate  audience  is  not 
the  most  judicious  in  the  world,  they  were  rather  increased — by  the 
great  man's  vagaries.  This  encouraged  Ruskin  to  discard  the  work 
of  preparation,  and  to  trust  more  and  more  to  improvisation. 
"  Lecture  fluent,"  he  notes  in  his  diary  (November  18),  "  but  very 
forgetful."  At  the  same  time  the  topics  were  becoming  more  and 
more  disturbing  to  his  equanimity.  The  lecture  on  "  Protestantism  "  had 
not  been  much  prepared,  but  the  delivery  of  it — as  might  be  expected 
from  the  subject — caused  great  stir  in  his  audience ;  there  was  a  strong 
contingent  of  Catholics  present,  and  they  cheered  loudly  the  winged 
words  of  their  fiery  ally.  Ruskin  had  always  been  fond  of  spicmg  his 
lectures  with  surprise- packets  in  the  matter  of  illustrations.  The  little 
jest  in  this  kind  with  which  he  ended  the  lecture  on  "  Protestantism  " 
created,  if  much  amusement  among  the  undergraduates,  yet  amazement 
and  scandal  among  their  grave  and  reverend  seniors.  Carpaccio's  St. 
Ursula  had  been  shown  as  "a  type  of  Catholic  witness."  What,  he 
went  on  to  ask,  shall  be  the  types  and  emblems  to  represent  the  spirit  of 
Protestantism  ?  Amidst  breathless  excitement  the  Professor  proceeded 
to  untie  two  pictures  lying  on  the  table  before  him.  There  are  two 
aspects,  he  went  on  to  say,  of  the  Protestant  spirit — the  spirit  when  it 
is  earnest,  and  the  spirit  when  it  is  hypocritical.  "This,"  he  exclaimed, 
"  is  the  earnest  spirit ; "  and  he  showed  to  an  audience,  which  held  its 
sides,  an  enlargement  of  a  pig  by  Bewick.    "It  is  a  good  little  pig," 

1  For  other  references  to  Havelock  and  Gordon,  see  Vol.  XXXI.  p.  386  n. 


INTRODUCTION 


he  remarked  patronisingly  ;  "a  pig  which  is  alert  and  knows  its  own 
limited  business.  It  has  a  clever  snout,  eminently  adapted  to  dig  up 
and  worry  things,  and  it  stands  erect  and  keen,  with  a  knowing  curl  in 
its  tail,  on  its  own  native  dunghill."  The  hypocritical  type  was  Mr. 
Stiggins,  with  his  shabby  gloves,  and  a  concertina.  The  jest  might  have 
passeil  in  the  privacy  of  a  class-room  ;  but  the  lectures  were  reported  in 
the  London  papers,  and  in  leading  articles  a  call  was  made  for  some 
kindly  and  benevolent  veto  to  be  placed  upon  "  an  academic  farce."  ^  The 
subjects  of  the  next  lectures  had  been  announced  as  "The  Pleasures  of 
Sense  "(Science)  and  "The  Pleasures  of  Nonsense"  (Atheism).  Ruskin 
had  let  it  be  known  among  his  friends  that  he  meant  to  devote  these 
discourses  to  lashing  the  men  of  science,  and  intervening  in  the  dis- 
cussion on  vivisection,  which  was  then  agitating  the  University,  in 
connexion  with  a  proposal  for  a  physiological  laboratory.  He  was 
persuaded,  sorely  against  his  will,  to  cancel  the  lectures,  and  sub- 
stitute others  on  less  controversial  topics.  Various  letters  of  his  have 
been  published  in  which  he  refers  to  the  scientific  party  in  the 
University  intervening  in  panic  to  stop  his  mouth.  "I  have  been 
thrown  a  week  out  in  all  my  plans,"  he  wrote  to  Miss  Beever 
(December  1),  "by  having  to  write  two  new  lectures,  instead  of  those 
the  University  was  frightened  at.  The  scientists  slink  out  of  my  way 
now,  as  if  I  was  a  mad  dog."  ^    And  similarly  to  Miss  Greenaway : — 

''December  1,  1884. — I've  been  in  a  hard  battle  here  these  eight 
weeks, — the  atheistic  scientists  all  against  me,  and  the  young  men 
careless,  and  everything  going  wrong — so  that  I  h  ive  had  to  fight 
with  sadness  and  anger  in  all  my  work.  My  last  lecture  is  to  be 
given  to-morrow,  but  I  have  been  feeling  more  tired  in  this  cold 
weather,  and  the  correspondence  is  terrible.  I  have  never  a 
moment  to  draw  or  do  anything  I  like — except  throw  myself  on 
my  bed  and  rest,  or  listen  to  any  good  music  if  I  can  get  it 
quietly."  ^ 

It  need  not  be  supposed  that  Ruskin  meant  his  remarks  to  be 
taken  quite  literally.  In  fact,  the  interposition  had  come  not  from 
opponents  but  from  friends — such  as  Sir  Henry  Acland,  Mr.  Macdonald, 
and  Jowett — and  it  was  made  in  the  interest  of  his  own  health,  rather 
than  in  a  desire  to  shield  the  scientists  (atheistic  or  otherwise)  from 
his  assaults.     His  private  conversation  at  this  time  betrayed  high 

^  See  especially  a  pungent  article  in  The  World  of  November  19,  1884,  thus 
headed. 

'  Hortus  Inclusm,  p.  97  (ed.  3),  reprinted  in  a  later  volume  of  this  edition. 
Kate  Greenaway,  by  M.  H.  Spielmann  and  G.  S.  Layard,  p.  138  (No.  53). 


INTRODUCTION 


Iv 


mental  tension,  his  behaviour  was  not  free  from  eccentricity,  and  those 
to  whose  lot  it  fell  to  soothe  him  by  music  were  not  wholly  successful. 
At  this  time  Ruskin  was  much  with  Jowett,  who  "entertained  him  in 
his  house  with  a  watchful  and  almost  tender  courtesy,''  which  left  on 
those  who  saw  the  two  men  together  "  an  indelible  impression.""  ^  What 
his  friends  feared  was  that  Ruskin  might  quite  break  down  under  a 
continuation  of  the  strain.  With  the  postponement — sine  die,  as  it 
was  destined  to  be — of  the  lectures  on  "  Sense  "  and  "  Nonsense,""  the 
danger  was  past.  That  the  danger  existed  is  confessed  by  a  good  re- 
solve registered  three  weeks  later  in  his  diary  :  "  I  must  never  stir  out 
of  quiet  work  more"  (December  23).  The  last  two  of  the  substituted 
lectures  —  on  "Birds"  and  "Landscape"  respectively  —  were  full  of 
charm,  and  had  a  great  success.  "I  gave  my  fourteenth  and  last  for 
this  year,"  he  wrote  to  Miss  Beever  (December  1),  "with  vigour  and 
effect,  and  am  safe  and  well,  Z).G."  Two  other  addresses,  however,  he 
gave  at  Oxford.  One  v/as  to  the  members  of  the  St.  George's  Guild  ;^ 
the  other  was  at  a  meeting  of  the  Anti-Vivisection  Society  on  December 
9 ;  a  report  of  his  speech  is  contained  in  a  later  volume  (XXXIV.). 

On  leaving  Oxford,  Ruskin  went  for  a  day  or  two  to  Cheltenham, 
and  then  to  pay  a  long-piomised  visit  to  Farnley — partly  in  connexion 
with  the  loan  of  Turner  drawings  for  the  exhibition,  referred  to  above. 
Mrs.  Fawkes  describes  her  guest  as  "  seeming  very  worn  and  tired 
out,""  but  full  of  interesting  talk.  From  Farnley  Ruskin  returned  to 
Brantwood,  intending  to  complete  the  interrupted  course  at  Oxford 
during  the  ensuing  term.  He  first  prepared  for  press  the  third 
and  the  fourth  of  the  lectures  already  delivered,  and  these  were  duly 
published  in  February  and  April.  He  also  was  at  work  on  the  fifth 
of  the  lectures,  and  fully  intended  to  write  and  deliver  the  sixth  and 
the  seventh.  On  March  10,  however,  "the  vote  endowing  vivisection" 
was  passed,^  and  Ruskin,  in  wrath  and  vexation  of  spirit,  shook  the 
dust  of  his  feet  off  against  the  University  for  ever.  The  letter  in 
which  he  conveyed  his  resignation  to  the  Vice- Chancellor  has  never 

^  Life  and  Letters  of  Benjamin  Jowett,  by  Evelyn  Abbott  and  Lewis  Campbell^ 
1897,  vol.  ii.  p.  75.  To  like  effect,  another  observer:  ^^The  Master — of  whom  Ruskin 
always  spoke  as  the  'sweetest  of  men' — was  singularly  happy  in  his  influence, 
gently  and  imperceptibly  leading  the  conversation  away  from  dangerous  or  over- 
exciting  topics,  and  directing  his  numerous  enthusiasms  into  channels  least  likely 
to  be  disturbing  to  the  peace  of  the  University  "  ("  Happy  Memories  of  John  Ruskin/' 
by  L.  Allen  Harker,  in  The  Puritan,  May  1900). 

2  Printed  in  Vol.  XXX.  p.  87. 

^  For  some  particulars  on  this  subject,  see  Sir  Henry  Acland's  Preface  of  1893 
to  The  Oxford  Museum,  in  Vol.  XVI.  p.  237-  The  final  circulars  issued  on  the 
two  sides  (the  one  against  the  grant  being  signed  by  Ruskin),  and  a  report  of  the 
debate  and  division,  are  in  the  Times  of  March  9  and  11,  1885. 


Ivi 


INTRODUCTION 


seen  the  liglit,  but  liiiskin  referred  to  it  in  a  letter  given  below.^  He 
resigned  on  IVIarch  22,  and  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of  April  21  it 
was  suggested  that  Kuskin,  in  his  sixty-seventh  year,  might  well  feel 
that  the  adequate  discharge  of  the  duties  of  the  professorship  were  no 
longer  compatible  with  "a  just  estimate  of  decline  in  the  energy 
of  advancing  age,''  -  and  that  the  resignation  would  give  him  leisure 
to  complete  his  numerous  books  in  the  press  and  to  write  his  auto- 
biogra})liv.  Four  days  later  the  following  letter  from  him  appeared 
in  the  same  newspaper:^ — 

"  Brantwood,  April  24  [1885]. 

^'SiR, — By  mischance  I  have  not  till  to-day  seen  your  kindly- 
meant  paragraphs  on  my  resignation  of  the  Slade  Professorship  at 
Oxford.  Yet,  permit  me  at  once  to  correct  the  impression  under 
which  they  were  written.  Whatever  may  be  my  failure  in  energy 
or  ability,  the  best  I  could  yet  do  was  wholly  at  the  service  of 
Oxford ;  nor  would  any  other  designs,  or  supposed  duties,  have  inter- 
fered for  a  moment  with  the  perfectly  manifest  duty  of  teaching  in 
Oxford  as  much  art  as  she  gave  her  students  time  to  learn.  I  meant 
to  die  in  my  harness  there,  and  my  resignation  was  placed  in  the 
Vice- Chancellor's  hands  on  the  Monday  following  the  vote  endowing 
vivisection  in  the  University,  solely  in  consequence  of  that  vote, 
with  distinct  statement  to  the  Vice-Chancellor,  intended  to  be  read 
in  Convocation,  of  its  being  so.  This  statement  I  repeated  in  a 
letter  intended  for  publication  in  the  Universiti/  Gazelle,  and  sent 
to  its  office  a  fortnight  since.  Neither  of  these  letters,  so  far  as 
I  know,  has  yet  been  made  public.  It  is  sufficient  proof,  however, 
how  far  it  was  contrary  to  my  purpose  to  retire  from  the  Slade 
Professorship  that  I  applied  in  March  of  last  year  for  a  grant  to 
build  a  well-lighted  room  for  the  undergraduates,  apart  from  the 
obscure  and  inconvenient  Ruskin  school ;  and  to  purchase  for  its 
furniture  the  two  Yorkshire  drawings  by  Turner  of  Crook  of 
Lune  and  Kirkby  Lonsdale — grants  instantly  refused  on  the  plea 
of  the  University's  being  in  debt. 

"I  am,  Sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

'^JoHN  Ruskin." 

A  few  weeks  later  I  reverted  to  the  subject  in  conversation  with 
Ruskin,  and  he  said  oracularly,  "  Double  motives  are  very  useful  things ; 

•  See  also,  in  a  later  volume,  a  letter  to  Jowett  of  February  28,  1884. 
^  From  the  "Advice"  of  July  1882,  issued  with  the  list  of  his  Works. 
3  From  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  April  25,  1885.    Reprinted  in  Igdrasil,  December 
1890,  vol.  ii.  p.  103  ;  and  thence  in  Ruskiniuna,  p?!rt  i,,  1890,  p.  116. 


INTRODUCTION 


Ivii 


you  can  do  a  thing  for  two  that  you  couldn't  for  one;""  and  it  is 
difficult  to  say  which  had  had  the  most  weight  with  him,  the 
University's  refusal  of  what  he  had  wanted,  or  its  concession  of  what 
he  disapproved.  He  had  already  in  another  way  visited  upon  the 
University  its  sin,  if  such  it  were,  in  refusing  to  add  any  more 
drawings  by  Turner  to  its  collections.  By  a  will  dated  October  23, 
1883,  he  had  bequeathed  to  the  Bodleian  Library  his  books,  his 
portrait  of  the  Doge  Andrea  Gritti  by  Titian,  and  the  choicest  of 
his  Turner  drawings.  On  June  4,  1884,  he  revoked  this  bequest.  He 
never  set  foot  in  Oxford  again.^ 

The  severance  of  his  connexion  with  Oxford  left  Ruskin  free  for 
other  work,  more  especially  for  the  writing  of  Proeterita ;  but  with 
this  a  new  chapter  in  his  life  begins,  which  must  be  reserved  for  a 
later  Introduction.  Here  I  pass  to  some  detailed  notice  of  the  several 
books  contained  in  the  present  volume. 


"THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS" 

Hie  Bible  of  Amiens^  which  stands  first  in  the  volume,  is  one  of 
the  most  popular  of  Buskin's  later  writings — as  the  account  in  the 
Bibliographical  Note  (pp.  5-17)  of  its  numerous  editions  sufficiently 
shows.  It  owes  some  of  its  circulation  to  use  as  a  guide-book ;  but  it 
is  much  more  than  that,  being,  as  I  shall  presently  suggest,  one  of  the 
central  books  in  Buskin's  gospel.  As  a  guide-book,  indeed,  The  Bible 
of  Amiens  is  obviously  fragmentary,  and  the  visitor  to  Amiens  will 
readily  find  other  books,  both  large  and  small,  which  cover  the 
descriptive  and  explanatory  ground  more  fully ,2  though  none  which  will 
take  him  more  faithfully  to  the  heart  of  the  matter.  Buskin's  treat- 
ment of  the  subject  is  at  once  more  comprehensive,  and  less  complete, 

1  Two  years  after  resigning  his  Professorship  in  1885^  he  removed  from  his 
Drawing  School  at  Oxford  a  large  number  of  drawings  and  pictures  :  see  Vol.  XXI. 
p.  307. 

*  Ruskin  refers  to,  and  quotes  from,  three  guide-books  which  may  still  be  con- 
sulted :  Gilbert's  Description  Historique,  1833  (see  p.  134  n.) ;  Roze's  little  Visite^  1877 
(see  p.  133);  and  Jourdain  et  Duval's  Stalks  et  les  Clotures,  1867  (see  p.  127  n.). 
This  latter  book  is  now  difficult  to  obtain ;  but  all  other  descriptions  of  the  cathe- 
dral are  now  superseded  by  the  elaborate  and  sumptuously  illustrated  Monographie, 
in  2  volumes,  1901,  by  Georges  Durand  (see  p.  141  n.).  From  it  M.  Durand  has 
abstracted  a  capital  little  Description  Abregee  (Amiens,  1904).  Readers  who  desire 
to  make  a  comparative  study  of  the  iconography  in  various  PVench  cathedrals  may 
be  referred  to  an  interesting  and  well- illustrated  book  by  M.  Emile  Male,  entitled 
L'Art  Religieuoc  du  XIIF  Steele  (1902).  I  am  indebted  for  acquaintance  with  this 
book,  as  for  one  or  two  notes  in  the  present  volume,  to  M.  Marcel  Proust's 
annotated  French  translation  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens  (see  p.  15). 


Iviii  INTRODUCTION 

than  any  which  may  be  found  elsewhere;  and  it  may  be  useful,  at  the 
outset,  to  indicate  the  scope  and  purpose  of  the  book. 

Uuskins  title  is,  as  usual,  a  sufficient  clue  to  his  purpose.  The 
Bible  of  Am'iens,  it  will  be  noticed,  was  a  sub-title,  the  principal  one 
heing  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us,  which  again  was  explained  as  indi- 
catiirg  "Sketches  of  the  History  of  Christendom  for  boys  and  girls  who 
have  been  held  at  its  fonts.''  The  Bible  of  Amiens  will  not  be  read 
arifht  unless  it  be  recognised  as  one  of  an  intended  series  which  was 
to  deal  successively  with  various  local  divisions  of  Christian  History, 
and  was  to  gather  towards  their  close,  into  united  illustration  of  the 
power  of  the  Church  in  the  thirteenth  century."^  The  Bible  of 
Amiens,  it  has  been  well  said,^  "was  to  be  to  the  Seven  Lamps  what 
St.  Mark's  Rest  was  to  Stones  of  Venice:'  As  in  St.  Mark's  Rest  the 
object  was  to  tell  some  chapters  of  "the  History  of  Venice  for  the 
help  of  the  few  travellers  who  still  care  for  her  monuments  "'^ — the 
monuments  described  in  the  Stones — so  was  The  Bible  of  Amiens  to  tell 
some  passages  of  early  Christian  history,  in  order  to  illustrate  the 
spirit  which  lit  the  Lamps  of  Christian  Architecture.  At  first  sight 
The  Bible  of  Amiens  seems  a  somewhat  chaotic  book.  We  start  at 
Amiens  itself;  but  before  we  find  ourselves  in  front  of  the  cathedral 
again,  we  have  been  taken  upon  journeys  "Under  the  Drachenfels" 
and  over  a  considerable  portion  of  northern  Europe  as  well,  not 
without  some  excursion  to  southern  lands,  and  have  made  acquaint- 
ance with  "The  Lion  Tamer,"  St.  Jerome.  There  is  a  sentence  in 
the  final  chapter  of  the  book  which  gives  the  meaning  of  these  ex- 
cursions into  seemingly  foreign  fields.  "Who  built  it?"  asks  Ruskin, 
as  he  bids  us  look  up  to  "the  Parthenon  of  Gothic  Architecture.'"* 
"  God,  and  Man,"  he  tells  us,  "  is  the  first  and  most  true  answer. 
The  stars  in  their  courses  built  it,  and  the  Nations.  Greek  Athena 
labours  here — and  Koman  Father  Jove,  and  Guardian  Mars.  The 
Gaul  labours  here,  and  the  Frank :  knightly  Norman, — mighty  Ostro- 
goth,— and  wasted  anchorite  of  Idumea."^ 

The  object  of  his  chapters  is,  then,  to  trace  in  broad  outline  the 
history  and  the  beliefs  of  the  men  and  nations  whose  genius  found 
expression  in  an  exemplary  work  of  perfect  art.  Taking  the  Cathedral 
of  Amiens  as  the  representative  work  of  the  Franks,  he  shows  us  first 
the  state  of  the  country  in  heathen  days  (i.  §  6).    Then  he  describes 

1  See  the  Plan  of  the  series  included  in  the  book;  below,  p.  18G. 

2  W.  G.  Collingwood'ri  Life  and  Work  of  John  Ruskin,  1900,  p.  357. 

3  The  sub-title  of  SC.  Mark's  Rest  (Vol.  XXIV.). 
('h.  iv.  §  12  (p.  131). 


i  INTRODUCTION  lix 

the  coming,  the  preaching,  and  the  martyrdom  of  St.  Firmin — as 
they  are  told  on  the  sculptures  of  the  choir  (§§  7,  8).  The  little 
chapel  raised  over  the  body  of  the  Saint  at  St.  Acheul,  near  to 
Amiens,  was  "  the  first  cathedral  of  the  French  nation,"  and  Amiens 
itself  became  the  first  capital  of  the  Franks  in  France  (§§  8,  9). 

The  story  of  the  conversion  of  Clovis,  the  Frankish  king,  and  the 
rise  of  his  kingdom  are  next  passed  in  rapid  review  (§§  10-21),  and 
then  we  are  taken  back  to  the  legends  of  St.  Martin  (§§  22-31),  which 
also  it  is  needful  to  know  in  reading  the  sculptures  of  the  cathedral. 
The  "  history  of  Christendom "  which  Ruskin  desires  to  tell  is  that 
of  its  faiths  and  its  virtues;  and  for  insight  into  these,  the  Christian 
legends  are  a  clue:  "whether  these  things  ever  were  so""  is  im- 
!  material ;  what  matters  is  the  fact  that  they  were  believed  (§§  17-19, 
23,  25). 

The  second  chapter  ("Under  the  Drachenfels ")  begins  with  the 
story  of  St.  Genevieve  (§§  1-7),  and  passes  to  the  history  of  the 
Franks,  describing  their  home  in  the  heart  of  the  mountainous  region 
stretching  eastward  from  the  Drachenfels  (§§  8-26);  and  their  national 
characteristics  (§§  16,  27-48).  Then  the  story  of  Clovis  is  resumed, 
and  is  brought  into  relation  with  St.  Genevieve  (§§  49-55).  The  gist 
of  the  chapter  is  its  sketch  of  the  Frank  character ;  the  arrange- 
ment, as  Ruskin  himself  remarks,  is  somewhat  devious  (§  39). 

The  remark  applies  not  less  to  the  third  chapter  ("The  Lion 
Tamer"),  The  fact  that  the  book  was  published  in  Parts,  at  con- 
siderable intervals  of  time,  and  Ru  skin's  habit  of  spreading  his  material 
over  many  books,  leave  their  marks  very  plainly,  I  think,  on  The 
Bible  of  Amiens.  Thus,  in  the  present  instance,  this  Chapter  iii. 
would  be  clearer  if  it  had  been  combined,  in  its  bird's-eye  views 
of  the  early  Christianised  empire,  with  the  similar  sketch  in  Can- 
dida Casa ;  and  in  its  discussion  of  monasticism,  with  parts  of  \VaUe 
Crucis  and  one  of  Ruskin's  essays  in  Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany.^ 
What  Ruskin  lacked,  said  Matthew  Arnold,  was  "the  ordo  con- 
catenatioque  veri.'"'^  I  doubt  the  justice  of  the  criticism  in  the  larger 
sense  implied  by  the  word  veri ;  substitute  rerum,  and  the  criticism 
is  true,  especially  of  his  later  books,  written  in  broken  health.  Yet 
there  is  throughout  The  Bible  of  Amiens  a  clear  and  a  consistent 
purpose,  and  this  Chapter  iii.  is  essential  to  it.  Who  built  the 
Cathedral  of  Amiens?  The  faith  of  the  Frank  (Ch.  ii.)  and  the 
labours  of  the  "  wasted  anchorite  of  Idumea,""  through  whom  "  the 

1  See  Vol,  XXXII.  pp.  116-125. 

2  Letters  of  Matthew  Arnold,  1895,  vol.  i.  p.  51. 


Ix 


INTRODUCTION 


Bible  became  the  library  of  Europe^'  (§  36)— the  library  of  Europe, 
})reseiite(l  everywhere  to  the  Church  as  of  common  authority  {§  39),  and 
everywhere  inscribed  on  the  stones  of  its  buildings.  "The  Life,  and 
(iospel,  and  Power  of  it,  are  all  written  in  the  mighty  works  of  its 
true  believers:  in  Normandy  and  Sicily,  on  river  islets  of  France  and 
in  the  river  glens  of  England,  on  the  rocks  of  Orvieto,  and  by  the 
sands  of  Arno.  But  of  all,  the  simplest,  completest,  and  most  authori- 
tative in  its  lessons  to  the  active  mind  of  North  Europe,  is  this  on  the 
foundation  stones  of  Amiens"  (Ch.  iv.  §  57). 

This  passage  brings  us  to  the  point  in  which  Ruskin's  description 
of  the  Cathedral  of  Amiens  (Ch.  iv.)  is,  as  I  said,  less  complete 
than  those  which  may  be  found  elsewhere.  He  does,  indeed,  glance  at 
many  of  its  features,  and  always  in  a  most  suggestive  way.  His 
insistence  upon  the  purity  of  its  Gothic  (§  2)  served  as  the  starting- 
point  for  Mr.  Pater's  essay  on  the  cathedral. ^  Ruskin's  remarks  upon 
the  economy  of  means  by  which  the  effect  of  size  was  attained  by  the 
builders  (§  9)  is  a  happy  illustration  of  a  passage  in  the  Seven 
Lamps.^  Let  your  building,  he  there  says,  "be  well  gathered  to- 
gether " ;  for  "  those  buildings  seem  on  the  whole  the  vastest  which 
have  been  gathered  up  into  a  mighty  square,  and  which  look  as  if 
they  had  been  measured  by  the  angePs  rod,  '  the  length,  and  the 
breadth,  and  the  height  of  it  are  equal.'"  The  words  must  have 
occurred  to  many  a  traveller  as  on  leaving  Amiens  he  has  seen  the 
cathedral  gather  itself  into  an  increasing  mass  as  it  recedes  from  view. 
Ruskin's  description,  again,  of  the  wood-carvings  of  the  choir  (§  5) 
catches  in  a  few  lines  the  very  spirit  of  the  wonderful  w^ork.  To 
the  choir-screen,  partly  described  in  Chapter  i.,  he  did  not  revert ;  a 
modern  writer,  it  will  be  remembered,  has  made  it  the  subject  of  an 
interesting  chapter.^  Upon  one  part  of  the  cathedral,  the  south 
door,  Ruskin  did  not  here  enter,  because  he  had  described  it  already 
in  an  earlier  book ;  ^  others  he  left  alone,  perhaps  because  their  destruc- 
tion by  restoration  was  too  painful  a  subject.^  But  his  reason  for 
concentrating  attention  on  the  quatrefoiis  of  the  western  facade  was 
that  in  them  is  ''the  series  of  sculpture  in  illustration  of  Apostolic 
and  Prophetic  teaching  which  constitutes  what  I  mean  by  the  '  Bible ' 
of  Amiens"  (p.  161).  It  is  to  them,  therefore,  that  Chapter  iv. 
("Interpretations")  is  mainly  devoted. 

^  See  his  Miscellaneous  Studies,  p.  105:  "The  greatest  and  purest  of  Gothic 
churches,  Notre-Dame  d'Amiens/'  etc. 

2  Cli.  iii.  §  8  (Vol.  VIII.  p.  108). 

3  La  Cathcdrale,  by  M.  Huysmans,  ch.  xiii. 
^  Two  Paths,  Vol.  XVI.  pp.  281,  855-357. 

^  See  below,  p.  141. 


INTRODUCTION 


Ixi 


In  The  Bible  of  Amiens  we  may  find,  I  think,  the  final  phase,  and 
the  central  truth,  of  Ruskin's  religious  views.  The  evangelical  phase 
was  long  passed,  and  more  and  more  indeed  he  had  come  to  revolt 
against  narrowness  and  self-sufficiency  in  creed.  But  he  had  passed 
also  through  the  phase  of  rationalism  and  doubt.  For  some  years,  as 
we  have  already  seen,i  he  had  asked  his  readers  to  note  a  more  dis- 
tinctively Christian  tone  in  his  teaching.  It  was,  in  one  sense,  a 
more  ''Catholic  tone."  In  his  Letters  to  the  Clergy  (1879) ^  he  had 
deplored  the  changes  of  the  liturgy  in  the  English  Book  of  Common 
Prayer;  he  paid  more  and  more  attention  to  the  saints  and  martyrs 
of  mediaeval  Christendom.  It  was  his  friendship  with  Cardinal  Manning, 
perhaps,  that  suggested  the  rumour  of  his  impending  reception  into 
the  Church  of  Rome.  One  letter  (1887)  in  which  he  denied  this  very 
emphatically  has  been  given  already;^  another  (1888)  will  be  found  in 
a  later  volume.^  A  passage  from  this  later  letter,  in  which  he  explains 
''  the  breadth  of  his  communion,'"*  should  be  connected  with  some  words 
in  The  Bible  of  Amiens.  "I  gladly  take,"  he  wrote  to  his  correspon- 
dent, "the  bread,  water,  wine,  or  meat  of  the  Lord's  Supper  with 
members  of  my  own  family  or  nation  who  obey  Him,  and  should  be 
equally  sure  it  was  His  giving,  if  I  were  myself  worthy  to  receive  it, 
whether  the  intermediate  mortal  hand  were  the  Pope's,  the  Queen's, 
or  a  hedge-side  gipsy's."  The  words  throw  light  on  what  he  says  in 
this  book  :  ^  "  Ail  differences  of  Church  put  aside,  the  words  '  except  ye 
eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  Man  and  drink  His  blood  ye  have  no 
life  in  you'  remain  in  their  mystery,  to  be  understood  only  by  those 
who  have  learned  the  sacredness  of  food,  in  all  times  and  places, 
and  the  laws  of  life  and  spirit,  dependent  on  its  acceptance,  refusal, 
and  distribution."  On  its  acceptance,  in  the  spirit  of  Longfellow's 
lines :  ^ — 

^'A  holy  family,  that  makes 
Each  meal  a  Supper  of  the  Lord ; " 

on  its  refusal,  in  a  double  sense — Ruskin's  meaning  being,  on  the  one 
side,  that  he  who  refuses  "  the  good  gifts  of  God "  shuts  himself  off 
from  an  intended  use,  and,  on  the  other  side,  that  all  immoderate 
indulgence  must  be  refused  both  as  harmful  to  the  individual  and 

1  Vol.  XXIII.  p.  xlvi. 

2  Vol.  XXXIV. 
Vol.  XXIX.  p.  92. 

*  In  Arrows  of  the  Chace,  Vol.  XXXIV.  (No.  142  of  the  letters  in  Ruskiniana). 

^  See  p.  154. 

^  The  Golden  Legend. 


Ixii  INTRODUCTION 

as  wrongful  to  others ;  and  thus,"  lastly,  on  its  distribution,  in  the 
spirit  of  LowelPs  lines  :  ^ — 

"The  Holy  Supper  is  kept,  indeed, 
In  whatso  we  share  with  another's  need." 

Here  are  two  aspects  of  Ruskin's  religion,  and  their  point  of  contact 
with  his  social  and  economic  teaching.    "  All  true  Christianity,"  he  says  j 
in  his  ninth  Letter  on  the  Lord's  Prayer,  "is  known,  as  its  Master 
was,  in  breaking  of  bread,  and  all  false  Christianity  in  stealing  it.  Let 
the  clergyman  only  apply — with  impartial  and   level  sweep — to  his  , 
congregation  the  great  pastoral  order:  'The  man  that  will  not  work,  | 
neither  should  he  eat':  and  be  resolute  in  requiring  each  member  | 
of  his  flock  to  tell  him  what — day  by  day — they  do  to  earn  their  ! 
dinners; — and   he   will   find   an   entirely  new   view  of  life   and  its 
sacraments  open  upon  him  and  them.''^    He  believed  intensely  that 
"every  good   gift  and   perfect  gift   is   from   above," ^  and   he  had 
little  sympathy  with  the  ascetic  ideal,  which  would  renounce  them.  { 
But  he  believed  no  less  intensely,  with  his  "  dear  friend  and  teacher,"  * 
Lowell,  that  faith  without  works  was  dead.     If  his  communion  was  i 
thus  broad,  so  also  was  his  creed.    He  believed  in  the  universality  of  j 
inspiration;  he  attributed  it  to  "the  whole  body  of  believers,  in  so  I 
far  as  they  are  partakers  of  the  Grace  of  Christ,  the  Love  of  God,  I 
and  the  Fellowship  of  the  Holy  Ghost"  (p.  115).    He  believed  also 
in  what  theologians  call,  I  think,  "continuous"  or   "developing"  in- 
spiration ;  his  desire  was  that  his  writings  should  "  be  found  by  an 
attentive  reader  to  bind  themselves  together  into  a  general  system  of 
interpretation  of  sacred  literature, — both  classic  and  Christian,  which 
will  enable  him  without  injustice  to  sympathise  in  the  faiths  of  candid 
and  generous  souls,  of  every  age  and  every  clime"  (p.  119).    He  states 
no  precise  dogmas,  but  in  the  beautiful  passage  which  closes  The  Bible 
of  Amiens  he  defines  what  was  to  him  the  substance  of  religion,  and  1 
throughout  its  pages,  and  those  of  his  other  later  works,  he  insists  on 
the  revelation  of  the  Divine  Spirit  as  the  fact  which  gives  the  clue  to 
history,  meaning  to  life,  and  hope  for  the  future. 

The  illustrations  to  The  Bible  of  Amiens  are  in  this  edition  very 
numerous.  They  fall  into  three  categories.  Firsts  the  Plates  which 
Ruskin  included  in  the  book.    The  frontispiece  to  the  volume  is  that 

'  The  Vision  of  Sir  Laun/al,  ii.  8. 

2  Vol.  XXXIV. 

3  James  i.  17.    See  Vol.  XIX.  p.  82,  Vol.  XXII.  p.  435. 
*  Vol.  VII.  p.  451. 


INTRODUCTION 


Ixiii 


which  he  used  as  frontispiece  to  the  book.  It  is  perhaps  not  without 
significance,  in  connexion  with  foregoing  remarks,  that  he  chose  as 
frontispiece  to  the  first  volume  in  a  series  of  sketches  of  Christian 
History  a  picture — Cimabue's — of  the  Madonna.  "After  the  most 
careful  examination,"  he  writes  elsewhere,^  "neither  as  adversary  nor  as 
friend,  of  the  influences  of  Catholicism  for  good  and  evil,  I  am  per- 
suaded that  the  worship  of  the  Madonna  has  been  one  of  its  noblest 
and  most  vital  graces.  .  .  .  There  has  probably  not  been  an  innocent 
cottage  home  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  Europe  during 
the  period  of  vital  Christianity,  in  which  the  imagined  presence  of  the 
Madonna  has  not  given  sanctity  to  the  humblest  duties,  and  comfort  to 
the  sorest  trials  of  the  lives  of  women."  The  engraving  from  Ruskin's 
study  of  Cimabue*'s  Madonna  was  given,  further,  in  illustration  of 
his  discussion  of  successive  types  (see  p.  165).  Another  engraving 
(Plate  II.)  was  from  a  drawing  of  Amiens  Cathedral  seen  from  the 
river,  which  Ruskin  made  in  1880.  His  drawing  of  the  northernmost  of 
the  three  Western  Porches  (Plate  XI.)  is  of  special  interest,  as  having 
been  made  in  1856,  before  the  restoration  of  the  facade.  A  comparison 
of  it  with  the  photogravure  of  the  restored  fac^^ade  (Plate  X.)  will  show 
how  ruthless  was  the  process  of  reducing  the  front  to  complete  regu- 
larity. In  previous  editions  of  the  book,  Ruskin's  drawing  has  been 
represented  by  Mr.  Allen'^s  engraving  of  it.  The  steel-plate  was  found, 
however,  to  be  too  much  worn  to  give  a  satisfactory  result ;  and  a 
photogravure  direct  from  the  drawing  (at  Oxford^)  has  been  sub- 
stituted. The  other  Plates  included  in  the  earlier  editions  were  the 
Historical  Maps  of  "The  Dynasties  of  France"  (VI.)  and  the  Plan 
of  the  Western  Porches  (XII.). 

Secondly^  this  edition  includes  23  Plates,  containing  the  photographs 
which  Ruskin  had  taken,  and  which  he  placed  on  sale,  to  illustrate 
the  book.  There  were  in  all  twenty-six  of  these,  as  shown  in  his  Ap- 
pendix II.  (below,  p.  178).  The  first  (not  there  included  in  the  num- 
bered series)  was  of  four  scenes  from  the  Life  of  St.  Firmin  (Plate  IV.). 
Then  came  the  twenty-one  numbered  photographs  of  details  of  the 
sculpture  on  the  West  Front.  Of  these,  Nos.  1-3  are  now  given 
together  (Plate  XIII.).  Nos.  4i-21  were  of  the  quatrefoils;  these  are 
reproduced  on  Plates  XIV.  to  XXXI.  No.  22  was  a  general  view  of 
the  Western  Porches  (Plate  X.).  No.  23  was  of  "The  Porch  of  St. 
Honore":  this  has  been  given  in  The  Two  Paths,  where  the  porch  is 

^  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  41  (1874)  :  Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  82. 

2  Educational  Series,  No.  51.  Ruskin's  note  upon  the  old  front,  now  "replaced 
by  a  modern  design/'  should  be  consulted:  Vol.  XXI.  p.  121. 


Ixiv 


INTRODUCTION 


described.^  No.  24 — a  view  of  "The  South  Transept  and  Fleche'' — is 
on  Plate  VIII.;  and  No.  25— General  View  of  the  Cathedral  from 
the  other  bank  of  the  Somme"— is  on  Plate  III.  In  order  that 
the  reader  may  readily  be  able  to  find  any  particular  quatrefoil, 
references  to  the  Plates  in  the  present  volume  have  been  added  to 
Ruskin's  Index  Lists  (pp.  179-185). 

Thirdly,  three  other  illustrations  have  been  added.  One  is  a  steel- 
engraving  (Plate  V.)  which  Ruskin  had  executed  from  drawings  made 
for  him  in  1880  by  Mr.  Frank  Randal,  and  which  he  entitled  "The 
Two  Dogs";  the  dogs  occur  in  the  series  of  sculptures  of  the  Life 
of  St.  Firmin  (see  below,  p.  30  n.).  Another  additional  Plate  (VII.) 
is  from  a  photograph  of  part  of  the  choir  stalls ;  while  the  third  (IX.) 
is  a  steel-engraving  which  was  made  for  Ruskin  of  the  Madonna  over 
the  South  Door. 

The  text  of  the  book  is  unchanged  in  this  edition,  except  that  a 
few  revisions,  noted  by  Ruskin  in  his  own  copies  of  the  book,^  have 
been  made,  and  that  some  misprints — occasionally  rather  disconcerting 
to  the  sense  ^ — have  been  corrected.  Particulars  on  this  matter  are 
given  in  the  Bibliographical  Note. 

The  manuscript  of  the  greater  part  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens  is  pre- 
served at  Brantwood.  This  MS.  includes  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens^  the 
Preface;  Ch.  i.  §§  1-33;  of  Chapter  ii.,  a  first  draft  of  §§  8-36,  and  a 
fair  copy  of  §§  8-28 :  this  shows  many  variations  from  the  printed 
text,  portions  of  the  fair  copy  having  ultimately  been  transferred  to 
§  10  of  Ch.  iii.  and  to  §§  20,  22,  23  of  Candida  Casa ;  of  Ch.  iv. 
§§  1-33,  notes  for  §§  34-47,  and  then  §§  48  to  the  end.  Of  Ch.  iii. 
(originally  entitled  by  Ruskin  "Monte  Cassino")  there  are  only  some 
rough  notes.  A  few  additional  passages  from  the  MS.  are  now  given 
as  footnotes  (see  pp.  96,  108,  146);  and  a  page  of  it  is  reproduced  in 
facsimile  (p.  122). 

''VALLE  CRUCIS" 

The  Bible  of  Amiens  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the  first  Part  in  a  pro- 
jected series  of  Studies  in  Christian  History  and  Architecture.  Ruskin's 
scheme  for  the  series,  printed  in  this  volume  (p.  186),  is  very  attractive, 
and  of  his  many  Unwritten  Books  this  is  perhaps  the  most  to  be 

1  Plate  XVI.  in  Vol.  XVI.  (p.  356). 

a  A  copy  of  chapter  ii.  slightly  revised  by  the  author  is  in  the  Ruskin  Museum 
at  Coniston. 

'  See  pp.  35,  Q6  nn. 


INTRODUCTION 


Ixv 


regretted.  In  successive  volumes  he  was  to  deal  with  (2)  Verona,  (S) 
Rome,  (4)  Pisa,  (5)  Florence,  (6)  the  Monastic  Architecture  of  England 
and  Wales,  (7)  Chartres,  (8)  Rouen,  (9)  Lucerne,  and  (10)  Geneva. 
The  titles  selected  for  the  volumes  give  tantalising  foretaste  of  the 
glamour  of  historical  and  poetical  association  which  Ruskin  threw  over 
his  subjects — the  "Ponte  della  Pietra,''  for  Verona,  the  bridge  which 
had  carried  the  march  alike  of  Roman  armies  and  of  Theodoric  the 
Goth ;  "  Ara  Coeli,"  for  Rome,  a  church  full  of  associations  in  Ruskin's 
mind,  as  we  shall  see;  " Ponte-a-Mare,"  for  Pisa,  the  bridge  built  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  "  never  more  to  be  seen  by  living  eyes " ;  ^  the 
"Ponte  Vecchio,"  for  Florence;  "Valle  Crucis,""  for  the  monasteries  of 
England  and  Wales;  "the  Springs  of  Eure,""  for  Chartres  and  its 
cathedral — the  church  which  he  most  admired ;  for  Rouen,  "  Domremy," 
in  whose  forests  the  Maid  of  Orleans  learnt  her  woodnotes  wild  ;  ^  for 
the  pastoral  forms  of  Catholicism,  "The  Bay  of  Uri,"'  so  beautiful  in 
Turner'^s  drawings  and  Ruskin's  description ;  ^  and  for  the  pastoral  Pro- 
testantism of  Savoy,  "The  Bells  of  Cluse" — the  bells  from  the  towers 
of  Maglans,  whose  harmonious  chime  once  "  filled  the  whole  valley  with 
sweet  sound,"  ^  "  the  sound  of  church  bells,  that  peculiar  creation  of 
mediaeval  age,  which  falls  upon  the  ear  like  the  echo  of  a  vanished 
world."  5  The  list  of  titles  is  as  of  the  chapters  in  Ruskin's  life  and 
studies  which  comprise  his  deepest  associations  and  fondest  thoughts. 
The  books  were,  too,  to  have  been  largely  illustrated.  He  had  by  him 
many  drawings  of  his  own  which  would  have  found  place  in  the  series, 
and  his  Museum  at  Sheffield  is  rich  in  records  which  St.  George's 
artists  had  made  under  his  directions.^  He  mentions,  in  an  essay  of 
1887,  that  his  assistant  Arthur  Burgess  had  been  "employed  at  Rouen 
in  directing  the  photography  for  which  I  had  obtained  permission  to 
erect  scaffolding  before  the  north  gate  of  the  west  front";^  and  he 
"hoped  with  his  help  to  carry  out  the  design  of  Our  Fathers  have 
j  Told  Us.''''^  He  hoped,  too,  to  issue  coloured  outlines  of  painted 
glass  windows.^  But  these  plans,  of  which  the  realisation  might  have 
occupied  many  years  of  his  fullest  working  life,  were  destined,  in  the 

1  Val  d'Amo,  §  282  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  165). 

2  See  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  8  (Vol.  XXVII.  p.  138),  and  compare  Sesame  and 
Lilies,  §  82  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  133). 

3  See  Modern  Painters,  vol.  v.  (Vol.  VII.  p.  144). 

^  See  Deucalion,  i.  ch.  v.  ("The  Valley  of  Cluse") :  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  151. 
»  Fronde's  History  of  England,  ch.  i. 
«  See  Vol.  XXX. 

'  See  Plate  IX.  in  Vol.  XXX.  (p.  189). 
«  Vol.  XIV  pp.  355-356. 

'  See  (in  a  later  volume  of  this  edition)  a  letter  of  December  4,  1881,  to  the 
Rev.  J.  P.  Faunthorpe. 

xxxTii.  e 


Ixvi 


INTRODUCTION 


actual  circumstances  of  his  broken  health  and  scattered  energies,  to 
remain  only  a  beautiful  dream.^ 

Some  little  contribution  towards  its  realisation  Ruskin  did,  how- 
ever, succeed  in  making,  and  it  is  this  which  forms  the  Second  Part 
in  the  present  volume. 

First  are  some  pages  for  Ara  Coeli,  the  intended  Third  Part  of  Our 
Fathers  have  Told  Us.  The  pages  were  to  have  come  in  the  second 
chapter  of  the  book,  which  chapter  Ruskin  had  hoped  to  have  ready 
for  publication  in  1884.^  The  pressure  of  his  Oxford  work  in  that 
year,  and  illness  in  the  year  succeeding,  prevented  this  purpose.  The 
chapter,  so  far  as  Ruskin  had  prepared  it  for  press,  is  now  printed 
for  the  first  time  (pp.  192-202);  I  have  prefixed  some  introductory 
remarks  (p.  191)  to  explain  the  place  and  significance  of  Ara  Cceli  in 
Ruskin's  scheme. 

The  next  chapters  were  intended  for  Valle  Crucis,  the  Sixth  Part 
of  Our  Fathers,  which  was  to  have  dealt  with  the  monastic  architec- 
ture of  England  and  Wales.  The  first  chapter  (pp.  205-226)  is  an 
introduction  to  a  sketch  of  early  Christianity,  especially  monastic 
Christianity,  in  Britain.  It  is  entitled  from  "  Candida  Casa,"  the 
White  House  being  the  ancient  name  of  Whithorn  or  Whitherne 
Abbey  on  the  Solway,  the  famous  foundation  of  St.  Ninian  in  the 
fourth  century,  as  Bede  relates.  The  place  had  a  personal  interest  for 
Ruskin  as  the  home  of  one  branch  of  his  family.  A  female  ancestor 
was  a  cousin  of  Sir  Andrew  Agnew,  the  last  hereditary  sheriff"  of 
Wigtownshire.  Her  grandson  had  been  minister  of  Whithorn.  In  a 
later  generation,  Mr.  George  Agnew,  father  of  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn, 
was  hereditary  sheriff'-clerk  of  Wigtown.  Ruskin,  as  we  have  seen 
(p.  xlviii.),  was  at  Whithorn  in  October  1883,  and  in  the  number  of 
Fors  written  at  the  time  he  recorded  some  impressions  of  his  visit.^ 
He  had  some  of  the  pages  of  Caml'ida  Casa  set  up  in  type,  pro- 
bably at  about  the  same  time,  and  he  was  at  work  upon  them,  as 
his  diary  shows,  in  April  1886,  but  he  never  completed  the  chapter, 
though  his  notes  for  it  exist.  The  pages  were  published  in  1894 
as  a  chapter  in  Verona  and  other  Lectures,^  and  the  editor  of  that 
volume  (Mr.  Collingwood)  constructed  from  Ruskin's  notes  the  miss- 
ing conclusion  of  the  chapter;  and  it  is  here  appended  (p.  202)  to 
Ruskin's  text. 

1  Among  the  MSS.  at  Brantwood  are  some  sheets  on  which  he  had  begun  to  make 
notes  from  Gibbon  and  other  sources  under  the  several  titles  of  his  projected  books. 

2  As  he  states  in  Roadside  Songs:  see  Vol.  XXXII  p.  119  n 

3  Letter  92  (Vol.  XXIX.  pp.  450-451). 

*  See  the  Bibliographical  Note  in  Vol.  XIX.  p.  427. 


INTRODUCTION 


Ixvii 


In  the  second  chapter  of  Voile  Crucis,  Ruskin  intended  to  recom- 
mence with  the  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Church,  but  for  this 
chapter  there  are  no  materials  in  completed  form. 

The  third  or  fourth  chapter  ^  would  have  been  the  lecture  on  "  Cis- 
tercian Architecture,''  already  referred  to  (p.  xlv.).  A  summary  of 
this  (by  Mr.  Wedderburn)  had  appeared,  under  that  title,  in  the  Art 
Journal  of  February  1883.  Subsequently  Ruskin  set  up  in  type  the 
full  text,  and  the  lecture  was  referred  to  in  Letter  93  (Christmas 
1883)  of  Fors  as  "  forthcoming.'"'  ^  It  was  not,  however,  published  till 
1894,  when  it  appeared  as  Chapter  v.  in  Verona  and  other  Lectures. 
under  a  new  title,  "Mending  the  Sieve,"  with  reference  to  the 
miracle  of  St.  Benedict's  ministry  mentioned  in  §  11  (p.  236).  It  is 
this  latter  text — the  text  of  the  lecture  as  written — which  is  here 
given  (pp.  227-249);  but  several  passages  from  the  report  of  the 
lecture  as  reported,  and  some  others  from  the  MS.,  are  appended  in 
footnotes  (pp.  227  ,  228,  231,  233,  235,  242,  245,  246,  249). 

The  Plate  (XXXII.)  included  in  this  Part  of  the  present  volume 
gives  a  Plan  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Gall,  adapted  by  Ruskin  from 
Viollet-le-Duc's  Dictionary  of  Architecture ;  it  may  stand  for  the 
general  plan  of  a  Benedictine  abbey  of  any  place  or  time"  (p.  241). 

The  jnanuscript  of  Ara  Coeli  is  at  Brant  wood,  now  bound  up  in  a 
volume  containing  other  material  for  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us;  that 
of  Candida  Casa  and  Mending  the  Sieve  is  bound  up  separately  in  a 
volume  (also  at  Brantwood)  lettered  Valle  Cruets.  Among  the  MSS. 
are  an  index  to  leading  topics  in  Gibbon,  which  Ruskin  made  for  his 
own  use ;  tables  of  dates  which  he  put  together  from  other  sources ; 
notes  on  early  British  and  French  history,  collected  from  various 
books;  extracts  from  Palgrave's  Arabia;  and  many  other  memoranda 
of  a  like  kind. 

''THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND" 

The  lectures  with  which  Ruskin  inaugurated  his  second  tenure  of 
the  Slade  Professorship  at  Oxford  were  written  under  promise,  as  it 
were,  of  good  behaviour.    He  struck  this  note  in  the  first  of  them, 

^  So  the  notes  suggest ;  but  in  the  passage  of  Fors  cited  below  Ruskin  refers  to 
the  lecture  on  Cistercian  Architecture  as  ^'^the  second  forthcoming  number  of 
Valle  Crucis."  His  order  of  publication  of  Parts  did  not,  however,  always  correspond 
with  the  ultimate  arrangement. 

2  See  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  475. 


Ixviii  INTRODUCTION 

when  he  proceeded  to  relieve  the  minds  of  his  audience  from  "un- 
happily too  well-grounded  panic,''  and  to  assure  them  that  he  had  "no 
intention  of  making  his  art  lectures  any  more  one-half  sermons  "  (p.  279). 
His  message  in  that  sort  had,  he  felt,  been  delivered ;  "  nor,"  he  added, 
"  have  I  any  more  either  strength  or  passion  to  spare  in  matters 
capable  of  dispute."  This  self-denying  ordinance  was  not,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  kept  in  force  for  very  long,  but  it  governed  the  scope 
and  tenour  of  the  lectures  which  he  delivered  upon  phases  of  English 
art  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Eight  years  before,  he  had  had  the  idea 
of  writing  "an  entirely  good-humoured  sketch"  of  modern  English 
painting;  but  the  Academy  Notes  of  1875  hardly  answered  to  this 
description  ;  the  object  was  more  nearly  attained,  as  has  been  remarked 
in  an  earlier  volume,^  in  the  present  course  of  lectures. 

Among  his  objects  was  to  give  "  some  permanently  rational  balance 
between  the  rhapsodies  of  praise  and  blame"  which  had  been  printed 
in  connexion  with  the  exhibition  of  Rossetti's  works  at  the  Royal 
Academy  in  the  winter  of  1883,  and  the  tone  which  he  adopted  was 
throughout  "advisedly  courteous"  (§  192).  Always  urbane  in  private 
intercourse,  Ruskin  knew  well — no  writer  perhaps  better — how  to  be 
the  same — when  he  chose — on  paper;  and  these  lectures  are  a  prin- 
cipal example  of  his  more  polite  and  courtly  style.  Their  felicity  in 
praise,  their  adroitness — sometimes  in  selection,  sometimes  in  reserve — 
their  delicate  touch — now  of  flattery,  and  now  in  censure — must,  I 
think,  strike  every  reader.  To  the  friends,  and  to  the  friends  of  the 
friends,  whose  work  Ruskin  had  occasion  to  notice,  the  lectures  gave 
the  liveliest  pleasure.  Mr.  Holman  Hunt  wrote  to  Ruskin  expressing 
in  the  most  generous  terms  the  help  which  he  had  derived  from  the 
praises  of  his  friend.  The  lecture  on  Mr.  Hunt's  "Triumph  of  the 
Innocents "  gave  fresh  confidence  to  the  artist's  patrons,  and  encouraged 
the  artist  himself  to  persevere  with  the  completion  both  of  the  original 
design  and  of  the  second  version  painted  from  it.^  Upon  the  work  of 
Burne- Jones  Ruskin  did  not,  as  we  have  seen  (p.  xlvi.),  say  within  the 
necessary  limits  of  time  all  that  he  had  hoped ;  but  the  appreciation,  as 
it  stood,  even  in  a  compressed  report  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  greatly 
pleased  the  artist's  friends.  "  A  spirit  moves  me,"  wrote  Mr.  Swinburne 
to  his  friend  in  the  "palace  of  painting," ^  "to  write  a  line  to  you,  not 
of  congratulation  (which  would  be  indeed  an  absurd  impertinence),  on 
the  admirable  words  which  I  have  just  read  in  this  evening's  paper's 

^  Vol.  XIV.  pp.  xxix.-xxx. 
2  See  below,  p.  277  n. 

^  See  the     Dedication  "  in  Poems  and  Ballads. 


INTRODUCTION 


Ixix 


report  of  Ruskin'?  second  Oxford  lecture,  but  to  tell  you  how  glad 
I  was  to  read  them.  If  I  may  venture  to  say  as  much  without  pre- 
sumption, I  never  did  till  now  read  anything  in  praise  of  your  work 
that  seemed  to  me  really  and  perfectly  apt  and  adequate.  I  do  envy 
Ruskin  the  authority  and  the  eloquence  which  give  such  weight  and 
effect  to  his  praise.  It  is  just  what  I  'see  in  a  glass  darkly '  that  he 
brings  out  and  lights  up  with  the  very  best  words  possible;  while  we 
others  (who  cannot  draw),  like  Shakespeare,  have  eyes  for  wonder  but 
lack  tongues  to  praise."^ 

Miss  Kate  Greenaway's  delight  in  Ruskin's  appreciation  will  be  the 
more  fully  understood  when  the  story  of  her  friendship  with  him  is  told 
in  a  later  volume.  His  appreciation  of  her  work ,2  it  may  be  remarked, 
was  prior  to  the  personal  friendship,  which  in  its  turn  was  largely 
directed  on  his  side  to  criticism  and  stimulus,  as  often  hortatory  and 
reproachful  as  complimentary.  With  Leighton'^s  art,  or  rather  with 
the  directions  in  which  for  the  most  part  he  employed  it,  Ruskin  had 
no  special  sympathy ;  the  critic's  tact,  in  only  hinting  disagreement  and 
in  selecting  points  for  pleasant  notice,  must  have  appealed  to  one 
who  was  himself  a  master  in  these  graceful  arts — though,  to  be  sure, 
Leighton  was  wont  to  paint  in  such  matters  with  a  fuller  brush.  To 
Ruskin's  praise  of  his  friend.  Miss  Alexander,  sufficient  notice  has  been 
called  in  the  preceding  volume. 

Of  the  manuscript  of  The  Art  of  England^  several  sheets  are  pre- 
served at  Brantwood.  These  contain  of  Lecture  III.,  §§  61-67 ;  of 
Lecture  V.,  §§  124-131,  132-139,  144-147,  150-154;  of  Lecture  VL, 
the  latter  part  of  §  157  and  §§  158  to  nearly  the  end  of  169;  and  of 
the  Appendix,  §  193  to  the  middle  of  §  204.  A  comparison  of  the 
MS.  with  the  printed  text  shows  much  minor  revision.  A  page  of  the 
MS.  of  Lecture  III.  is  given  in  facsimile  (p.  308). 

The  Plates  illustrating  The  Art  of  England  are  for  the  first  time 
introduced  in  this  edition.  The  first  (XXXIII.)  is  a  photogravure  of 
Holman  Hunt's  Triumph  of  the  Innocents.''  There  are  two  prin- 
cipal pictures  by  the  artist  of  this  subject;  that  here  reproduced  is 
the  completion  of  the  one  which  was  seen  and  described  by  Ruskin. 
The  second  (XXXIV.)  is  a  photogravure  of  a  drawing  by  Rossetti, 
described  in  the  text,  which  was  in  Ruskin's  collection. 

1  Memorials  of  Edward  Bume-Jones,  vol.  ii.  p.  132. 

'  They  had  met  shortly  before  the  lecture ;  but  in  the  lecture  Ruskin  was  only 
formulating  opinions  previously  formed. 


Ixx 


INTRODUCTION 


The  lecture  on  Burne-Jones  is  illustrated  by  a  photogravure 
(XXXV.)  of  a  pencil-study  by  the  artist,  in  the  Ruskin  Drawing 
School  at  Oxford,  for  one  of  the  Days  of  Creation— a  series  of  designs 
referred  to  in  the  lecture  (pp.  298,  303).  Leighton  is  represented  by 
a  photogravure  (XXXVIII.)  of  his  pencil  drawing  of  a  Lemon  Tree, 
which,  as  Ruskin  mentions  in  the  lecture,  was  for  a  while  lent  to  him 
for  exhibition  at  Oxford;  it  is  here  included  through  the  kindness 
of  Mr.  S.  Pepys  Cockerell.  The  steel-plate  (XXXIX.),  "In  Fairy 
Land,''  is  a  collection  of  figures  by  Miss  Kate  Greenaway,  which  were 
engraved  for  Ruskin  by  Mr.  RofFe ;  they  would  have  been  used  in 
Fors  Clavigera  had  the  Letters  been  carried  further.  Of  the  other 
two  Plates,  one  (XXXVI.)  is  a  facsimile  of  the  beautiful  design  by 
Richter,  described  in  the  text  (p.  300);  the  other  (XXXVIL)  is  a 
photogravure  from  the  copy  (at  Oxford)  by  Mr.  Fairfax  Murray  of 
one  of  Botticelli's  frescoes  now  in  the  Louvre.  The  copy  is  of  par- 
ticular interest  as  showing  the  fresco  before  the  "restoration"  to 
which  it  has  now  been  subjected  (pp.  313-314). 


"THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND" 

The  last  book  contained  in  this  volume  is  unfortunately  a  frag- 
ment; the  conditions  and  circumstances  which  caused  The  Pleasures  of 
England  to  be  interrupted  have  already  been  detailed.  There  are  those 
who  have  regretted,  with  some  bitterness,  that  "some  of  Ruskin's  force 
which  might  have  been  spent  in  masterly  analysis  of  mediaeval  aims 
and  aspirations,"  was  diverted  by  the  interference  of  friends  to  "  cour- 
teous tone  of  comment  on  contemporary  work."^  This  is  as  it  may  be; 
but  it  is  certainly  much  to  be  regretted  that  Ruskin  never  adequately 
fulfilled  the  scheme  of  these  later  lectures.  Their  intention  was  to 
tell  in  broad  outline  the  history  of  the  making  of  Christian  England, 
and  the  theme  was  to  be  illustrated  at  each  stage  by  reference  to  the 
arts  of  successive  epochs,  as  reflecting  and  satisfying  the  popular  in- 
stincts; hence,  as  Ruskin  explains  (§  8),  the  title — The  Pleasures  of 

^  See  an  admirable  appreciation  of  the  book  in  the  Architectural  Review  of 
December  1898.  The  superb  manner,"  says  the  writer  ("  H.  R.  "),  "  in  which 
the  1000  years  are  told,  leaves  one  full  of  ungrateful  but  irresistible  regrets  that  this 
is  all  we  shall  ever  get  now  from  his  pen.  I  close  the  book — and  the  story  of  the 
battle  of  Civitella  in  the  cadence  of  his  utterance,  wise,  wilful,  and  tender,  floats 
round  my  ears  an  aureole  of  memory.  .  .  .  His  political  economy — his  biographies 
are  his  alone.  The  bits  of  history  inlaid  in  his  writings — in  Fors  Clavigera  especially 
— can  never  be  continued,  will  never  be  repeated.    Ruskin  stands  with  the  poets." 


INTRODUCTION 


Ixxi 


England.  The  execution  of  this  scheme,  even  as  far  as  it  was  carried, 
s  somewhat  fragmentary,  and  the  illustrative  references  to  the  arts  of 
:he  time  are  less  abundant  than  a  reader  could  wish.  It  should  be 
-emembered,  however,  that  at  the  actual  lectures  many  photographs, 
Irawings,  and  illuminated  manuscripts  were  shown — now  irrecoverable 
for  purposes  of  reproduction.^  A  needful  caution  was  interposed  by 
Ruskin  in  an  aside  at  one  of  the  lectures:  "rough  generalizations  of 
^our  centuries  in  so  many  minutes  must  not  be  understood  without 
exceptions  or  taken  au  pied  de  la  lettre.'''^  The  lectures,  as  revised  by 
Ruskin  for  publication,  are,  however,  full  of  suggestive  insight  into 
the  heart,  hopes,  and  fears  of  bygone  times.  They  found  a  very 
sympathetic  reader  in  Cardinal  Manning,  who  told  Ruskin  that  he 
had  "read  the  four  lectures  with  pleasure  and  delight."*'  Ruskin's 
Dwn  verdict  upon  the  lectures,  when  in  course  of  preparation,  was 
delivered  to  Professor  Norton  :  "  I'm  pretty  well  forward  with  them, — 
but  they're  not  up  to  my  best  work."^ 

The  lectures  as  delivered  differed  a  good  deal  from  the  finally 
printed  text.  Of  the  original  lectures,  it  was  my  duty  (without 
Ruskin's  assistance,  however)  to  prepare  "  digested  plans,"  as  he  called 
them,*  for  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette.  Where  these  reports  contain  sub- 
stantial variations  from  the  lectures  as  published,  footnotes  are  given 
to  Ruskin's  text  (see,  e.g.,  pp.  462,  478,  481,  503).  The  report  of  the 
fifth  lecture,  which  Ruskin  did  not  include  in  the  book,  is  added, 
with  further  passages  from   the  MS.  (pp.  505-510).     He  meant  to 

^  See,  for  instance,  Ruskin's  own  note  at  p.  476. 

2  From  the  report  of  the  third  lecture,  Studies  in  Ruskin,  p.  236. 

^  See  in  a  later  volume  the  letter  of  October  7,  1884. 

*  See  his  letter  in  the  Bibliographical  Note,  p.  414.  Some  of  the  reports  in  the 
papers  may  well  have  caused  confusion  in  the  mind  of  readers.  Tlius  Ruskin's 
reference  to  "  Sir  Herbert  Edwardes/'  in  connexion  with  British  rule  in  India  (§  80), 
appeared  in  one  report  as  ''^  Prince  Albert  Edward."  At  other  times,  sarcastic  com- 
ments were  founded  in  the  newspapers  on  mere  failure  to  catch  Ruskin's  references. 
The  Saturday  Review,  for  instance,  of  October  25,  1884,  made  fun  of  Ruskin's  '^^dark 
saying"  about  three  whale's  cubs  combined  by  boiling";  not  remembering  the 
passage  in  Carlyle^  which  the  lecturer  was  quoting  (see  p.  426  n.).  So,  again,  a 
heavily-sarcastic  article  in  the  St.  James's  Gazette  (November  17,  1884)  was  founded 
on  Ruskin's  supposed  selection  of  Goethe  as  a,  representative  Protestant."  The 
Gazette's  reporter  had  put  down  "Goethe"  where  Ruskin  said  "Gotthelf."  Wiser 
people  were  sometimes  equally  at  sea  in  their  criticisms  of  Ruskin's  lectures.  Pro- 
fessor Freeman  wrote  (Contemporary  Review,  February  1891,  vol.  59,  p.  196) :  "  Very 
soon  after  I  came  back  to  Oxford  in  1884,  I  heard  one  of  Mr.  Ruskin's  last  lectures 
in  the  chair  of  Fine  Art.  He  spoke  of  many  things,  amongst  others  the  care  which 
the  mother  of  Theodoric  the  East-Goth  took  of  her  son's  clothes."  Freeman  had 
got  hold  of  the  wrong  end  of  the  story,  as  the  reader  will  see  below  (p.  434)  ;  and 
Ruskin's  point  is  one  of  which  Gibbon  also  makes  much,  but  perhaps  his  offence 
was  in  saying  "Ostrogoth"  instead  of  "East-Goth." 


INTRODUCTION 

,mbli,h  the  lecture,  and  his  material  for  it  is  now  included  (pp.  510- 
WO)  'I'his  is  fratrmentary;  consisting,  apparently,  of  two  alternative 
iHMMnniiiL^  for  tlie  lecture,  written  either  before  the  delivery  of  the 
Hct^^ual  lecture,  or,  at  a  later  date,  when  he  intended  to  pubhsh  it. 
'I'hi'  puisaircs  are,  however,  very  characteristic  of  their  author;  espe- 
cially ill  his  insistence  upon  the  principle  that  in  history,  as  in  art, 
things  theni.selves  should  be  studied,  and  not  the  corruptions  of  them 
(p.  518).  Uuskin  makes  the  same  point  elsewhere  in  this  volume 
(pp.  24,  431).  This  is  one  of  many  instances  in  which  (as  already 
indicated  a!)ovc,  p.  lix.)  the  collocation  in  a  single  volume  of  closely 
allied  studies  by  the  author  will,  it  is  believed,  enhance  their  interest. 

The  vmmutcnpt  of  §§  1-22  of  the  first  lecture  of  The  Pleasures  of 
Kri^'-land,  and  of  §  33  of  the  second,  is  at  Brantwood ;  some  passages 
from  it  are  added  below  the  text  (pp.  424,  425).  There  are  also  in  the 
possession  of  Mr.  J.  H.  Whitehouse,  of  Toynbee  Hall,  printed  proofs  of 
tlu'  first  three  lectures;  a  note  from  this  is  now  given  (p.  439). 

The  illustration  is  a  reproduction,  by  chromo-lithography,  reduced 
in  scale,  of  a  page  in  an  Antiphonarie  of  1290  (see  p.  489). 


FINAL  OXFORD  LECTURES 

When  the  course  upon  The  Pleasures  of  England  was  interrupted, 
Ruskin,  as  has  already  been  said  (p.  liv.),  substituted  three  other 
lectures.  Reports  of  these  are  included  in  this  volume — again  from 
the  Pull  Mall  Gazette  and  Studies  in  Ruskin.  For  the  preparation  of 
the  report  of  the  lecture  on  "  Birds,"'  Ruskin  lent  me  his  MS.  notes ; 
while  that  on  "Landscape"  was  revised  by  him. 


E.  T.  C. 


I 

"OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US" 

THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 
(1880-1885) 


XXXIII. 


A 


OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US" 

SKETCHES  OF 

THE  HISTORY  OF  CHRISTENDOM  FOR  BOYS 
AND  GIRLS 

WHO  HA  VE  BEEN  HELD  A  T  ITS  FONTS, 
BY 

JOHN  RUSKIN, 

HONORARY  STUDENT  OF  CHRIST  CHURCH,  HONORARY  FELLOW  OF  CORPUS  CHRISTI 
COLLEGE,  AND  SLADE  PROFESSOR  OF  FINE  ART,  OXFORD. 

PART  I. 
THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


GEORGE  ALLEN, 
SUNNYSIDE,  ORPINGTON,  KENT» 
1884. 


j 


[Bibliographical  Note. — The  Bible  of  Amiens  was  intended  to  be,  and  is 
described  on  the  title-page  as.  Part  I.  of  a  series  of  sketches  of  Christian 
Art  and  History,  entitled  Our  Father's  have  Told  Us;  but  no  other  Part 
was  issued  by  Ruskin,  though  some  chapters  intended  for  the  work  were 
printed  (see  below,  p.  190). 

A  lecture  on  "  Amiens "  was  given  by  Ruskin  at  Eton  College  on 
Saturday,  November  6,  1880.  The  minute-book  of  the  Eton  Literary  and 
Scientific  Society  contains  the  following  account  of  the  lecture: — 

'^On  Saturday,  November  6th,  Professor  Ruskin  gave  a  most  inte- 
resting lecture  on  '  Amiens.'  After  premising  that,  the  written  lecture 
not  having  arrived,  he  could  hardly  do  justice  to  his  subject  (a  pre- 
diction which  was  by  no  means  realized),  the  lecturer  described  first 
the  position  held  by  Amiens  in  the  Middle  Ages,  as  the  Venice  of 
France,  and  proceeded  to  draw  out  the  contrast  between  the  thir- 
teenth and  nineteenth  centuries,  which  '  the  intelligent  traveller  sees  so 
strongly  marked  nowadays  in  passing  through  the  town  in  the  shape  of 
fifty  black  smoking  chimneys,  and  in  the  midst  a  tall  fair  minaret,  that 
does  not  smoke.'  Then  after  dwelling  for  a  little  on  the  general 
features  of  the  Cathedral,  the  lecturer  passed  on  to  describe  the  statues 
of  the  Apostles  in  the  Central  Porch  of  the  West  Front,  each  statue 
with  its  representative  virtue  and  opposite  vice  below  it.  A  sketch 
of  the  legend  of  St.  Firmin,  the  patron  saint  of  the  place,  next  led  to 
a  stirring  description  of  true  martyrs.  And  then  followed  a  descrip- 
tion of  some  of  the  eventful  mediaeval  history  connected  with  the 
Cathedral,  and  especially  the  arbitration  of  St.  Louis  between  Henry  III. 
and  his  barons.^  In  conclusion,  Mr.  Ruskin  spoke  of  the  coinage  of 
the  earlier  English  kings  and  its  various  mottoes,^  exhibiting  in  illus- 
tration a  groat  of  Henry  V.  This  coin  he  most  kindly  presented  to 
the  Literary  Society  to  form  a  nucleus  for  a  collection  of  English  coins. 
He  has  also  given  to  the  School  Library  some  beautiful  photographs 
and  a  book  illustrative  of  the  stalls  and  carving  in  Amiens  Cathedral. 
At  the  conclusion  of  the  lecture  the  Head  Master,  who  had  kindly 
consented  to  take  the  chair,  proposed  a  vote  of  thanks  to  Mr.  Ruskin, 
which  was  carried  by  acclamation. 

"H.  B.  Smith,  Secretary" 

This  report  is  here  reprinted  from  The  Bookman,  March  1900,  pp.  175-176. 

A  shorter  sketch  of  the  lecture  appeared  in  The  Eton  College  Chronicle, 
December  9,  1880. 

The  Bible  of  Amiens  has  been  published  :— (1)  in  five  separate  octavo 
"  Parts  "  ;  (2)  in  a  collected  volume  ;  (3)  in  a  smaller  "  Travellers'  Edition  " 
(Chapter  iv.  only). 

1  See  below,  p.  233. 

2  See  Vol.  XXX.  pp.  268-277. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


ISSUE  IN  PARTS 
Part  I.,  comprising  Chapter  i.  and  Preface. 

Fnst  Editiou  (December  21,  1880). -The  title-page  of  this  Part  was 
follows  : — 

"Our  Fathers  have  Tokl  Us."  |  Sketches  of  [  the  History  of  Christendom 
I  for  Hoys  and  Girls  |  who  have  been  held  at  its  fonts,  j  By  i  John 
Hiiskin/l  Honorary  Student  of  Christ  Church,  and  Honorary  Fellow 
of  Corpus  !  Christi  College,  Oxford.  |  Part  I.— The  Bible  of  Amiens.  | 
Chapter  I.— By  the  Rivers  of  Waters.  |  George  Allen,  |  Sunnyside, 
Orpington;  Kent.  |  1880. 

Octavo,  pp.  vii.  +  40.  Issued  (as  also  the  subsequent  Parts)  in  buff-coloured 
pper  wrappers,  with  the  title-page  (enclosed  in  a  plain  double-ruled  frame) 
repeated  upon  the  front  cover;  tlie  Rose  being  added  above  the  pub- 
lisher's imprint.    2000  copies.    Price  Tenpence. 

In  January  1881  the  following  "Advice"  was  issued,  printed  on  one 
side  of  an  octavo  leaf : — 

"  It  is  intended  to  issue  this  book  in  the  same  form  as  the  original 
numbers  of  ^  Fors,'  with  an  illustration  of  some  kind  to  each  number, 
at  the  price  of  '  F'ors ' — viz.,  tenpence— with  a  French  edition  similarly 
at  a  franc  in  France. 

"The  first  number  is,  however,  published  without  its  illustration 
(Plate  I.),  that  it  may  be  in  time  for  Christmas ;  two  plates  (map  and 
plan)  will  be  given  with  the  second  number,  and  probably  some  of 
the  author's  architectural  studies  as  the  work  proceeds. 

"  In  connection  with  its  iss.ie,  a  series  of  illustrative  photographs 
will  he  prepared  and  sold  by  Mr.  Ward.  The  author  has  already  given 
a  commission  at  Amiens,  for  upwards  of  thirty  plates,  to  be  taken  from 
the  bas-reliefs  of  the  Cathedral  front,  forming  a  series  like  that  which 
lie  has  already  taken  and  illustrated  from  the  Tower  of  Giotto ;  and 
he  trusts  that  his  final  efforts  (made  under  much  difficulty  and  dis- 
couragement) to  preserve  some  record  of  thirteenth-century  sculpture 
may  be  at  least  so  far  encouraged  by  the  public  as  to  admit  of  their 
continuance  without  serious  loss  to  himself.  Profit  in  such  under- 
takings cannot  be  looked  for  ;  nor,  for  special  reason,  does  the  author 
intend,  from  this  work— text,  plate,  or  photograph— himself  to  re- 
ceive any." 

The  proposed  F^rench  edition  was  never  issued. 

Second  Edition  (November  1883).— 2000  copies.  There  were  no  altera- 
tiojis  of  the  text  in  this  edilion  ;  but  the  words  "Second  Edition"  were 
added  on  the  title-page  of  the  Part,  and  the  date  was  altered  to  "1883." 

Third  Edition  (June  1893).— 350  copies. 

The  sections  (§§)  of  Chapter  i.  were  not  num.bered  in  any  of  the  above 
editions. 

The  next  chapter  issued  (November  1881)  was  Chapter  IV.  in  a  separate 
Travellers'  Edition  :  see  below,  p.  11. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


Part  II.,  comprising  Chapter  ii. 

First  Edition  (December  1881). — The  title-page  was  the  same  as  that 
of  Part  I.,  except  for  the  altered  words  "Chapter  II. — Under  the 
Drachenfels/'  and  the  date  '^1881." 

Octavo,  pp.  41-88.  2000  copies.  Price  Tenpence.  The  sections  of  this 
chapter  were  numbered. 

With  this  Part  the  following  circular  was  issued,  printed  on  both  sides  of 
an  octavo  leaf : — 

"•OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US' 

ADVICE 

The  three  chapters'-  of  'Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us,'  now  sub- 
mitted to  the  public,  are  enough  to  show  ...  [as  now  printed  in 
Appendix  III.,  p.  186]  .  .  .  united  illustration  of  the  power  of  the 
Church  in  the  Thirteenth  Century. 

The  next  chapter,  which  I  hope  to  issue  soon  after  Christmas, 
completes  the  first  part,  descriptive  of  .  .  .  [again  as  now  printed  on 
p.  186]  .  .  .  preparatory  chapters. 

One  illustration  at  least  will  be  given  with  each  chapter,"^  .  .  . 
[again  as  on  p.  187]  .  .  .  subscribers  only. 

Published  by  George  Allen,  Sunnyside,  Orpington,  Kent :  price 
Tenpence  per  chapter. 

Carriage  Paid  to  any  place  in  the  United  Kingdom.  Each  Book- 
seller, Mr.  Ruskin  expects,  will  add  such  commission  for  his  own  profit 
as  he  may  deem  necessary. 

Post  Office  Orders  payable  to  George  Allen  at  Chief  Office,  London. 
Cheques  crossed  London  and  County  Bank. 


Publisher's  Notice, — To  save  the  inconvenience  of  small  remittances,  and 
ensure  the  delivery  of  each  chapter  as  it  appears,  Mr.  Allen  will  be  glad  to  re- 
ceive subscriptions  in  advance  for  at  least  one  part  (comprising  four  chapters). 
Should  the  work  not  be  proceeded  with,  all  balances  of  subscriptions  will  be 
returned. 

Christmas  1881." 

The  notice  was  reprinted  in  March  1882,  when  the  following  note  was 
added  at  the  words  "  given  with  each  chapter "  : — 

*  The  first  Plate  for  The  Bible  of  Amiens,  curiously  enough,  failed  in  the  en- 
graving ;  and  I  shall  probably  have  to  etch  it  myself.  It  will  be  issued  with  the 
fourth,  in  the  full-size  edition  of  the  fourth  chapter. 

Second  Edition  (May  1885). — 2000  copies.  There  were  no  alterations 
in  the  text. 

With  this  Part  was  issued  as  frontispiece  Northern  Porch  before 
Restoration"  (here  Plate  XL). 

1  Viz.,  Chapters  I.  and  II.,  and  the  separate  Travellers'  Edition  of  Chapter  IV. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


I'.irt  III.,  coinprisin-r  Chapter  iii. 

>1rW  Midon  (September  1«82).-The  title-page  differed  only  in  the 
wordi  "Chapter  III.— The  Lion  Tamer/'  and  the  date  ^^1882." 
OcUvo,  pp.  «!)-l.%.    2000  copies. 

Seomd  Edition  (August  lB8o).-2000  copies.  A  few  small  alterations 
were  made  in  the  text ;  these  are  noted  below  (p.  16). 

^\'ith  tliis  I'art  was  issued  as  frontispiece  ''Amiens:  Jour  des  Tre- 
pnf^s^-s"  (here  IMate  II.). 

Part  1\'.,  comprising  Chapter  iv. 

I'irst  Edition^  (October  1888).— The  title-page,  after  the  author's  name, 
j)r( H  eeded  : — 

Honorary  Student  of  Christ  Church,  Honorary  Fellow  of  Corpus  Christi 
I  College,  and  Slade  Professor  of  Fine  Art,  Oxford.  |  Part  I.— The 
Bible  of  Amiens.  |  Chapter  IV.— Interpretations.  |  George  Allen,  Sunny- 
side,  Orpington,  Kent.  |  1883. 

OcUvo,  pp.  137-216  (last  page  hlank).    3000  copies. 

'Hie  text  of  the  chapter  was  revised  for  this  issue  (see  below,  pp.  16,  17). 
With  this  Part  was  issued  the  following     Publisher's  Note"  : — 

"Subscribers  to  'Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us'  are  requested  to  note  that  the 
present  portion  of  the  work  ('The  Bible  of  Amiens')  will  be  shortly  completed 
by  the  publication  of  a  final  number  containing  the  author's  epilogue,  further 
engravings,  appendices  explanatory  of  the  photographs  and  other  matters  referred 
to  in  the  body  of  the  work,  and  a  full  index  to  the  entire  volume.  The  price 
of  this  appendix  will  be  Is.  8d.,  remittance  for  which  should  be  sent  in  advance 
to  Mr.  Allen;  the  cost  of  the  whole  volume  thus  amounting  to  5s.,  or  in  plain 
cloth,  ()s. 

"SuNNYsiDE,  Orpington,  Kent. 

"Post  Office  Orders  payable  to  George  Allen,  at  Chief  Office,  London. 
Cheques  crossed  London  and  County  Bank.  Stamps  not  accepted  for  sums  over 
Fire  Shillings." 

The  promised  "author's  epilogue"  was  never  written, 
.^fonrf  Edition  (June  1893).— 350  copies. 

in  May  1884  an  octavo  fly-sheet  was  issued,  headed,  "  'Our  Fathers  have 
Told  Us.'  Advice."  This  was  a  revision  of  the  similar  Advice  issued  with 
Part  II.  (see  above,  p.  7).  It  is  identical  with  the  text  of  Appendix  III. 
(here  pp.  180,  187),  except  that  for  "The  first  part  of  '  Our  Fathers  .  .  ."' 
it  reads,  "  The  four  chapters  of  '  Our  Fathers  ..."';  it  does  not  contain 
the  words  "  contrary  to  my  usual  custom "  before  "  I  now  invite  subscrip- 
tion "  ;  nor,  after  those  words,  the  passage  "  because  .  .  .  supporters." 
Instead  of  "The  present  volume  completes,"  it  reads,  "The  Appendix, 
whu  h  will  be  issued  shortly,  completes."    And  finally,  instead  of  the  two 

fnrm'^i'/*lH«;  ^/"^  ""^^^f^^^  the  octavo  form.  The  chapter  had  been  issued  in  another 
form  in  1881  {see  p.  11). 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


9 


last  sentences  as  they  now  stand  in  Appendix  III.,  it  reads,  "  One  illustra- 
tion will  be  given  with  each  chapter,"  adding  as  a  footnote,  "  The  first  plate 
for  ^The  Bible  of  Amiens'  will  be  issued  with  Appendix." 

Part  v.,  prepared  for  Ruskin  by  Mr.  Wedderburu,  comprising  the 
Appendices,  Index,  and  Preliminary  Matter. 

First  Edition  (June  1885). — On  the  cover  was : — 

"  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us."  |  Sketches  of  |  The  History  of  Christendom 
I  For  boys  and  girls  |  who  have  been  held  at  its  fonts.  |  By  ]  John 
Ruskin,  |  Honorary  Student  of  Christ  Church,  Honorary  Fellow  of 
Corpus  Christi  |  College,  and  Slade  Professor  of  Fine  Art,  Oxford.  | 
Part  I.  The  Bible  of  Amiens.  |  Appendix.  |  [Rose.']  \  George  Allen,  | 
Sunnyside,  Orpington,  Kent.  |  1885. 

There  was  no  separate  title-page.  Octavo,  pp.  i.-viii.,  219-263.  For  col- 
lation of  pp.  i.-viii.,  see  below.  On  p.  217^  list  of  Appendices " ; 
p.  218,  blank  ;  Appendix  I.,  pp.  219,  220 ;  Appendix  II.,  pp.  221-230 ; 
Appendix  III.,  pp.  231,  232;  p.  233,  "Index";  p.  234,  blank;  Index 
(by  Mr.  Wedderburn),  pp.  235-263. 
3000  copies.    Price  Is.  8d. 

With  this  Part  were  issued  a  frontispiece,  St.  Mary.  By  Cimabue,  at 
Assisi"  (now  Frontispiece  to  this  volume);  Plate  I.,  "The  Dynasties  of 
France"  (here  Plate  VI.) — a  leaf  was  inserted  after  Plate  I.  containing  a 
"Notice"  with  reference  to  the  subjects  represented  on  it  (see  now, 
p.  33  w.);  and  "Plan  of  West  Porches,"  which  was  a  double-page  Plate 
(unnumbered),  folded  (here  Plate  XII.). 

There  was  a  confusing  misprint  in  Appendix  II.,  List  ii.,  photograph 
"18"  being  misprinted  "13."  This  misprint  has  been  repeated  in  all  the 
small  editions. 

IN  VOLUME  FORM 

The  Bible  of  Amiens^  being  thus  completed,  was  now  issued  in  volume 
form,  bearing  the  date  "1884,"  though  not  issued  till  the  next  year.  The 
title-page  is  as  here  given  on  p.  3. 

Octavo,  pp.  xiv.  +  263.  The  collation  of  pp.  1-263  has  been  already 
given.  Half-title  (with  blank  reverse),  unnumbered  ;  Title-page  (with  imprint 
at  foot  of  the  reverse,  repeated  at  the  foot  of  p.  263— "Printed  by 
Hazell,  W^atson,  &  Viney,  Limited,  London  and  Aylesbury),  pp.  i.,  ii.  ; 
Corrigenda  (with  blank  reverse),  unnumbered  (see  p.  10);  Contents  (with 
blank  reverse),  unnumbered;  Preface  (here,  pp.  21-24),  pp.  iii.-vii. ;  p.  viii. 
is  blank.  The  headlines  are,  on  the  left-hand  pages,  "The  Bible  of  Amiens," 
except  that  in  the  cases  of  the  Notes  to  Chapter  i..  Appendices  and  Index, 
the  headlines  are  "Notes,"  "Appendices,"  "Index"  on  both  left-hand 
and  right-hand  pages ;  on  the  right-hand  pages,  the  title  of  the  chapter 
occupying  them. 

Issued  in  June  1885  in  cloth  boards  (red,  brown,  or  green),  lettered 
across  the  back,  "  Ruskin  |  '  Our  Fathers  |  have  Told  Us '  j  I  1  The  Bible 
!  of  Amiens."  Issued  also  in  mottled-grey  paper  boards,  with  white  paper 
label  on  the  back.    Price  6s. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


The  lij^t  of  CorriKenda  was  as  follows;  references  to  the  sections  and 
liupj*  in  the  present  edition  being  now  added  at  the  end  of  each  entry  :— 
Fairo   8  lines  8  and  9.  for  "our  first  photograph  (see  prefatory  references),"  rea^ 
^  our  first  ch(;ir  photograph  "  i  (iVT.^.-This  series  is  not  yet  arranged,  but 

is  diHtinct  from  that  referred  to  in  Chapter  iv.    See  Appendix  II.).— §  7, 

lino  18.  o  -lo   1-  o 

1«»  line  12,  ior  ii  voung  person,  read  young  persons.— ^  lb,  line  8. 
*>-)'  lino  V,  far  wlio  accusing  him,  read  on  whose  accusation  of.— ^  24,  line  18. 
"     34*  Tlio  plan  for  numbered  and  lettered  references  is  not  followed  after  the 
"     *  '     first  chapter.— This  was  added  as  a  note  in  small  ed.  ;  see  now,  p.  48  n. 
44,  lines  8  and  l»,  for  armies  reverberated,  read  armies,  reverberate.— Ch.  ii. 
§  4,  last  line. 

48.  lino  8,  for  nomade,  read  nomad.— Ch.  ii.  §  10,  line  5. 
''.     r)8,  line  18,' /or  Eisenbach,  read  Eisenach.— Ch.  ii.  §  24,  hne  22. 

:)8.  lino  2(»,  for  by,  read  beyond.— /6z<i.,  line  24. 
"     Gl,  note,  for  Actuarii,  read  Attuarii.— Ch.  ii.  §  28,  line  4  of  note. 
!]     r.2.  note,  for  brise,  read  bise.— 76irf.,  p.  68,  line  2  of  quotation  m  note. 
\\     (\2,  note,  for  coulous,  read  cowXom.— Ibid.,  line  8. 
„     7S,  line  20,  for  Batoerans,  read  Batavians.— Ch.  ii.  §  45,  line  3. 
!!     8l/.  lino  11,  for  burrow;  read  burrow,— Ch.  iii.  §  1,  line  9. 

180  line  21  for  herself,  read  himself.— Ch.  iv.  §  41,  8  B,  line  1. 

VM\\  note,  for  No.  10,  read  No.  9.— Ch.  iv.  §  42,  16  B,  line  2  of  note. 
„    192.  line  l\  for  (2  Kings),  read  (1  Kings).— Ch.  iv.  §  43,  20  A. 
„    195.  lino  3,  for  Two  more  are,  read  Another  is,— Ch.  iv.  §  43,  24  B. 

SMALL  EDITION  (1897)2 

The  Bible  of  Amiens  was  next  issued  in  a  smaller  form^  uniform  with 
the  "  Small  Edition  "  of  Ruskin's  other  books.  It  was  called  (not  quite 
correctly)     Third  "  Edition.    The  title-page  is  : — 

"  Our  Fathers  have  |  Told  Us "  ]  Sketches  of  the  History  of  Christen- 
dom I  for  Boys  and  Girls  who  have  been  |  held  at  its  Fonts  |  By  |  John 
Raskin,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.  |  Honorary  Student  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford; 
and  1  Honorary  Fellow  of  Corpus  Christi  |  College,  Oxford  |  The  Bible 
of  Amiens  ]  Third  Edition  |  George  Allen,  Sunnyside,  Orpington  |  and  | 
156,  Charing  Cross  Road,  London  |  1897  |  \^All  rights  reserved^ 

Crown  8vo,  pp.  xvi.  +  310.  Half-title  (with  blank  reverse),  pp.  i.,  ii.  ; 
Title-page  (with  imprint  at  the  foot  of  the  reverse — Printed  by  Ballantyne, 
Hanson  &  Co.  |  At  the  Ballantyne  Press"),  pp.  iii.,  iv.  On  p.  v.  (blank 
reverse)  is  the  following  : — 

EDITOR'S  NOTE  TO  THE  1897  EDITION 

In  this  edition.  Chapter  I.  has,  for  convenience  of  reference  in  the  Index,  been 
divided  into  numbered  sections,  and  the  references  are  throughout  to  the  section 
of  each  chapter,  and  not  to  the  page.  Otherwise  the  text  is  unaltered,  save  for 
the  correction  of  misprints  in  earlier  editions,  and  one  or  two  notes  (marked 
Ed.  1897)  added  by  the  compiler  of  Appendix  I.,  the  two  lists  in  Appendix  II., 
and  the  Index. 

Preface,  pp.  vii.-xi.  (blank  reverse) ;  Contents,  pp.  xiii.-xiv.  ;  List  of 
Illustrations,  p.  xv.  (blank  reverse).  Text,  pp.  1-256.^  On  p.  257  is  the 
"  Plan  of  \V^est  Porches,"  reduced  in  scale  from  the  octavo  edition.  On 
p.  259  is  fly-title  for  Appendices.    Appendix  L,  pp.  261-262  ;  Appendix  II., 

I  Tho  correction  here  itself  has  been  corrected  ;  for  it  was  misprinted  in  the  list, 
tf  n^u       (""long  other  typographical  errors)  "our  first  choice  photographs." 
till  1898''"^         title-page  bears  the  date  "1897."  the  book  was  not  in  fact  issued 
Curiously,  there  are  no  pages  49  or  50. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


pp.  263-274 ;  Appendix  III.,  pp.  275-277  ;  Index,  pp.  279-310.  The  imprint 
is  repeated  at  the  foot  of  the  last  page. 

Issued  on  June  9,  1898,  in  green  cloth  boards,  lettered  on  the  back, 
"Ruskin  |  *Our  Fathers  |  have  Told  Us'  j  The  Bible  |  of  Amiens."  2000 
copies.    Price  5s. 

A  curious  error  crept  into  the  Small  Edition  of  1897.  In  Appendix  I., 
the  references  had  in  the  octavo  editions  been  to  pages.  TYiQy  were  now 
altered  to  sections  (§§) ;  but  whereas  in  the  text  the  sections  of  the  chapters 
were  not  numbered  continuously,  but  separately  for  each  chapter,  some  of 
the  references  in  this  Appendix  were  given  as  if  the  continuous  plan  had 
been  adopted.    This  error  has  continued  until  the  present  edition. 

Reprinted  in  November  1902,  without  alteration  except  of  the  date  on 
the  title-page  and  of  the  addition  of  the  words  Seventh  Thousand."  This 
edition  is  still  current.  The  price  was  reduced  in  January  1904  to  4s., 
and  in  July  1907  to  3s.  6d. 

POCKET  EDITION 

From  the  electrotype  plates  of  the  Small  Edition,  a  Pocket  Edition 
was  issued  in  1907,  uniform  with  other  volumes  in  the  same  edition  (see 
Vol.  XV.  p.  6).    The  title-page  is  :— 

"Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us"  |  The  Bible  of  Amiens  |  By  j  John 
Ruskin  |  London  :  George  Allen. 

Foolscap  8vo,  pp.  xv. +310.  On  the  reverse  of  the  title-page,  "June  1907 
I  Eleventh  Thousand  j  All  rights  reserved."    Price  2s.  6d.    4000  copies. 

SEPARATE  TRAVELLERS'  EDITION  OF  CHAPTER  IV.  (1881) 

This  is,  as  already  explained,  the  first  edition  of  Chapter  iv.,  which 
was  not  issued  uniformly  with  the  other  chapters  until  1883.  The  title- 
page  is  : — 

"Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us."  [  Part  I.  |  The  Bible  of  Amiens.  | 
Chapter  IV.  |  Interpretations.  |  {Separate  Travellers  Edition,  to  serve 
as  Guide  to  the  j  Cathedral.)  |  By  )  John  Ruskin,  LL.D.,  |  Honorary 
Student  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  and  Honorary  j  Fellow  of  Corpus 
Christi  College.  |  George  Allen,  |  Sunnyside,  Orpington,  Kent.  |  1881. 

Crown  8vo,  pp.  iv.  +  75.  ("Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us.")  Half-title  with 
blank  reverse,  pp.  i.,  ii. ;  Title-page  (with  imprint  at  the  foot  of  the  reverse, 
repeated  at  the  foot  of  p.  75— "Hazell,  Watson,  and  Viney,  Printers, 
London  and  Aylesbury"),  pp.  iii.,  iv. ;  text,  pp.  1-75.  The  headline  on 
the  left-hand  pages  is  "  The  Bible  of  Amiens "  ;  on  the  right-hand  pages, 
"  Interpretations." 

Issued  (in  November  1881)  in  red  leatherette  covers  (similar  to  those 
of  the  original  issues  of  Mornings  in  Florence  and  St,  Mark's  Rest)  ;  lettered, 
in  gold,  on  the  front :  "  The  Bible  of  Amiens.  |  No.  4.  Interpretations,  j 
Separate  Travellers'  Edition.  |  By  J.  R.  |  1881."  The  edges  were  cut  and 
gilt.    2000  copies.    Price  lOd. 


Second  Edition  (November  1890). — 2000  copies. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


Third  Edition  (lUDT).— This  is  a  newly-set  edition.    The  title-page  is 

"Our  Fathers  have  |  Told  Us"  |  The  Bible  of  Amiens  |  Chapter  IV 
I  Iiiterprc'Utioiis  |  {Separate  Travellers'  Edition,  to  serve  as  \  Guide  to 
the  Cathedral)  \  Hy  |  John  Ruskin,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.  |  Honorary  Student 
of  Christ  Church,  Oxford  ;  and  |  Honorary  Fellow  of  Corpus  Christi 
I  Colie^^e,  Oxford  |  Tliird  Edition  |  George  Allen,  Sunnyside,  Orpington 
I  and  I  15(5,  Charing  Cross  Road,  London  |  1897  |  [All  rights  reserved^ 

Crown  Hvo,  pp.  iv. +08.  Half-title  ("The  Bible  of  Amiens  |  Guide  to 
Cnthwlral "),  with  blank  reverse,  pp.  i.,  ii.  ;  Title-page  (with  imprint  at 
K.ot  of  the  reverse—"  Printed  by  Ballantyne,  Hanson  &  Co.  |  At  the 
Hallantyne  Tress"),  pp.  iii.,  iv.  ;  text,  pp.  1-93.  On  p.  94  is  the  "Plan  of 
W'cMt  I^orches."  On  pp.  95-98,  is  the  Advice,  as  described  below  (p.  14). 
Imprint  repeated  at  foot  of  p.  98. 

I.^sued  in  1897,  in  red  leatherette,  and  lettered  as  before.    2000  copies. 


ADVICE  TO  CFIAPTER  IV 

U'ith  the  Separate  Travellers'  Edition  an  "Advice"  was  issued. 

First  Edition  (November  1881). — There  was  no  title-page,  but  on  p.  1 
was  the  following  drop-title  : — 

Part  I.  I  The  Bible  of  Amiens,  \  Chap.  IV.  |  Interpretations.  |  {Separate 
Travellers'  Edition,  to  serve  as  Guide  to  the  \  Cathedral)  \  Advice. 

Crown  8vo,  pp.  4.  There  are  no  headlines,  pp.  2-4  being  numbered 
centrally. 

The  substance  of  this  "Advice"  was  embodied  in  Appendix  II.  of  the 
complete  work,  but  as  there  are  many  variations,  the  original  Advice  is 
here  reprinted  : — 

PART  I. 

THE  BIBLE   OF  AMIENS. 

Chap.  IV. 
INTERPRETATIONS. 
{Separate  Travellers^  Edition,  to  serve  as  Guide 
to  the  Cathedral.) 

ADVICE. 

This  fourth  number  of  the  Bible  of  Amiens  is  printed  before  the  second  and 
third,  (on  which  [  am  earnestly  occupied,)  in  a  reduced  size  for  the  convenience 
of  travoller.s,  who  may  wish  to  possess  this  number  only  as  a  guide  to  the  Cathedral, 
without  bnngmg  the  whole  work.  It  will,  however,  be  printed  uniformly  with  the 
rest  for  the  subscriljers  to  the  complete  series.  The  second  number  is  finished 
in  MS.,  hut  I  hnd  correction  of  press  very  irksome,  and  can  only  add  a  very  little 
of  that  work  to  the  task  of  composition,  besides  that  I  am  at  last  completing 
the  second  volume  of  the  small  edition  of  the  'Stones  of  Venice.' 

The  quatrefoils  on  the  foundation  of  the  west  front  of  Amiens  Cathedral, 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


described  in  the  course  of  this  number,  had  never  been  engraved  or  photo- 
graphed, in  any  form  accessible  to  the  public,  until  last  year,  when  I  com- 
missioned M.  Kaltenbacher  {6,  Passage  du  Commerce),  who  had  photographed 
them  for  M.  Viollet-le-Duc,  to  obtain  negatives  of  the  entire  series,  with  the 
central  pedestal  of  the  Christ. 

The  proofs  are  entirely  satisfactory  to  me,  and  extremely  honourable  to 
M.  Kaltenbacher's  skill :  and  it  is  impossible  to  obtain  any  more  instructive  and 
interesting,  in  exposition  of  the  manner  of  central  thirteenth-century  sculpture. 

I  directed  their  setting  so  that  the  entire  succession  of  the  quatrefoils  might 
be  included  in  eighteen  plates  :  the  front  and  two  sides  of  the  pedestal  raise  their 
number  to  twenty-one :  the  whole  costing  in  Amiens,  at  M.  Goyer's,  2,  Place 
St.  Denis,  four  napoleons,  unmounted,  and  in  London,  sold  by  my  agent  Mr.  Ward 
(the  negatives  being  my  own  property)  for  four  pounds  ;  or  separately,  each  five 
francs  at  Amiens,  and  five  shillings  in  London. 

Besides  these  of  ray  own,  I  have  chosen  four  general  views  of  the  cathedral 
from  M.  Kaltenbacher's  formerly- taken  negatives,  which,  together  with  the  first- 
named  series,  (twenty-five  altogether,)  will  form  a  complete  body  of  illustrations 
for  this  fourth  number  of  the  BiBLE  OF  Amiens  ;  costing  in  all  a  hundred  francs 
at  Amiens,  and  five  pounds  forwarded  free  by  post  from  Mr.  Ward's  (2,  Church 
Terrace,  Richmond,  Surrey). 

The  following  list  of  the  plates,  with  reference  to  the  pages  where  they  are 
described,  will  enable  any  readers  to  choose  what  they  like:  but  I  have  marked 
with  an  asterisk  those  which  are  especially  desirable. 

1.  (Central  Porch)  Virtues  and  Vices  (pp.  44-5) : — 

Courage,  Patience,  Gentillesse; 
Fear,  Anger,  Rudeness. 

2.  (Central  Porch)  Virtues  and  Vices  (pp.  45-6) : — 

Love,  Obedience,  Constancy; 
Discord,  Disobedience,  Heresy. 

3.  (Central  Porch)  Virtues  and  Vices  (pp.  48-9) : — 

Humility,  Temperance,  Chastity  ; 
Pride,  Gluttony,  Lust. 

4.  (Central  Porch)  Virtues  and  Vices  (pp.  47-8): — 

Charity,  Hope,  Faith ; 
Avarice,  Despair,  Idolatry. 

5.  (Southern  Porch,  p.  66) : — 

Daniel,  Gideon,  Zacharias,  Zacharias ;  * 
Moses,  Aaron,  Joseph,  Zacharias. 

6.  (Southern  Porch,  p.  67)  :— 

Flight  into  Egypt,  Fall  of  Idols,  Amos ; 
Christ  and  Doctors,  Return  to  Nazareth,  Amos. 

7.  (Southern  Porch,  p.  67)  :— 

Obadiah,  Solomon,  Solomon; 
Obadiah,  Queen  of  Sheba,  Solomon. 

8.  (Southern  Porch),— Herod  and  the  Magi  (p.  67). 

9.  (Central  Porch). — ^The  double  quatrefoils  of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Micah* 

(pp.  50-1). 

10.  (Central  Porch).— The  double  quatrefoils  of  Nahum,  Daniel,  and  Ezekiel 

(p.  51). 

11.  (Northern  Porch)  Months  and  their  signs: — 

December,  January,  February,  March  (p.  62). 

12.  (Northern  Porch)  Months  and  signs: — 

April,  May :  Double  quatrefoils  of  Zephaniah  (p.  62). 

13.  (Northern  Porch)  Months  and  signs: — 

Double  quatrefoils  of  Haggai.    June,  July  (p.  62). 

14.  (Northern  Porch)  Months  and  signs  : — 

August,  September,  October,  November  (pp.  62-3). 

15.  (Facade)  Double  quatrefoils  of  Hosea,  Joel,  Amos  (pp.  52-3), 

16.  (Facade)  Double  quatrefoils  of  Obadiah,  Jonah,  Micah*  (pp,  53-4-5). 

17.  (Facade)  Double rquatref oils  of  Nahum,  Habakkuk,  Zephaniah*  (pp.  55-6). 

18.  (Facade)  Double  quatrefoils  of  Haggai,  Zechariah,  Malachi  (pp.  57-8). 

19.  (Central  pedestal,  right  side)— Lily  and  Cockatrice*  (pp.  34-5). 

20.  (Central  pedestal,  left  side)— Rose  and  Adder*  (pp.  34-5). 

21.  (Central  pedestal,  front)— David.    The  Lion  and  Dragon  (pp.  33-4). 

22.  General  view  of  the  cathedral  from  the  other  bank  of  the  Somme. 

23.  The  South  Transept  and  Fleche. 

24.  The  Porch  of  St.  Honore.* 

25.  The  Western  Porches.* 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


ammtd  Fdttion  (Novemher  'llns  shows  various  alterations,  con- 

•Mnent  on  tl.c  coniplctioii  of  tlie  book  since  the  first  edition  of  the 
"A«lvic«."    On  p.  1  are  the  foHowing  notice  and  drop-title;— 

JV.R— Int«ndinK  purchasers  will  kindly  quote  the  numbers  [  given  in 
thU  Advice,  and  not  those  in  tlie  Appendix  |  to  ''The  Bible  of 
AmicnH."  |  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us.  |  Part  J.  |  The  Bibie  of  Amiens. 
I  Chap.  IV.  I  Interpretations.  |  {Separate  Travellers  Edition,  to  serve  as 
tiuitif  to  the  1  ('(ithedral.)  \  Advice  by  iMr.  Ruskin. 

The  text  i^  slightly  revised,  as  follows  :— 

••The  fourth  chapter  of  the  BiBLE  OF  Amikns  is  printed  in  a  reduced  size 
fur  the  convcineiico  of  travellers,  who  may  wish  to  possess  this  number  only  as 
a  ifuido  to  the  Cathedral,  without  bringing  the  whole  work. 

"The  (lufttrofoils  .  .  .  twenty-one  [as  in  ed.  1]:  the  whole  unmounted,  sold 
hy  my  .agent  Mr.  Ward  (the  negatives  being  my  own  property)  for  four  guineas; 
or  HCparattly,  each  hvo  shillings. 

•'He.sidcft  these  .  .  .  [as  in  ed.  1]  costing  in  all  five  guineas,  forwarded  free 
by  l>oHt  froui  Mr.  Ward*  (Bedford  Chambers,  28,  Southampton  Street,  Strand, 
lx)ndon).  Also  the  photograph  of  the  four  scenes  from  the  life  of  St.  Firmin, 
mentioned  on  page  8  of  Chapter  I. ;  price  five  shillings. 

"The  following  .  .  .  desirable  [as  in  ed.  1]. 

*  "Who  .supplies  photographs  to  illustrate  '  Fors  Clavigera,'  'The  Laws  of 
F^le,'  'St.  Mark's  Rest,'  'Mornings  in  Florence,"  'The  Stones  of  Venice,'  etc., 
and  of  whom  a  list  may  be  obtained  on  application." 


Then  follows  the  list  of  photographs  1-25,  as  in  ed.  1.  In  the  Appendix 
(lUHo)  to  The  Bible  of  Amiens,  however_,  the  numbers  of  the  photographs 
had  been  changed  ;  hence  the  notice  given  at  the  head  of  this  second 
edition  of  the  "Advice."    The  following  table  shows  the  changes: — 


in  Advice 

No.  in 

.  1  and  2) 

Appendix 

1 

4 

2 

6 

8 

6 

4 

7 

6 

18 

6 

19 

7 

ao 

8 

21 

9 

8 

10 

9 

11 

14 

IS 

15 

18 

16 

in  Advice 

No.  in 

1  and  2) 

Appendix 

14 

17 

15 

10 

16 

11 

17 

12 

18 

13 

19 

2 

20 

3 

21 

1 

22 

25 

23 

24 

24 

23 

25 

22 

Third  Edition  (August  1897).— At  the  end  of  the  third  edition  of  the 
Separate  Travellers'  Edition  of  Chapter  iv.,  a  third  edition  of  the  ''Advice" 
was  incorporated  (see  above,  p.  12).    Tlie  heading  now  became:— 

Publishers  Note.  \  li.B.— Intending  purchasers  of  the  photographs  | 
will  kindly  quote  the  numbers  given  in  \  this  Advice.  \  Our  Fathers  have 
Told  Ts.  j  The  Bible  of  Amiens.  \  {Separate  Travellers'  Edition,  to  serve 
an  Guide  to  \  the  Cathedral,  price  tenpence.)  \  Photographs  of  Amiens  | 
Cathedral. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


The  text  again  shows  several  revisions,  thus : — 

"  The  fourth  chapter  of  the  '  Bible  of  Amiens '  *  .  .  .  [as  in  ed.  2]  until  the  year 
1880,  when  Mr.  Ruskin  had  negatives  taken  of  the  entire  series,  with  the  central 
pedestal  of  the  Christ. 

"Mr.  Ruskin  wrote  at  that  time:  'It  is  impossible  to  obtain  any  more  in- 
structive and  interesting  photographs,  in  exposition  of  the  manner  of  central 
thirteenth-century  sculpture.' 

"  The  entire  succession  of  the  quatrefoils  are  included  in  eighteen  plates;  the 
front  and  two  sides  of  the  pedestal  raise  their  number  to  twenty-one. 

"Besides  these  there  are  four  general  views  of  the  Cathedral,  making  twenty- 
five  altogether,  which  form  a  complete  body  of  illustrations  for  the  '  Bible  of  Amiens ' ; 
costing  in  all  five  guineas ;  or  separately  five  shillings  each.  Also  the  photograph 
of  the  four  scenes  from  the  life  of  St.  Firmin,  mentioned  in  Chapter  I.  ;  price  five 
shillings. 

* '  The  following  list  of  the  photos,  with  reference  to  the  pages  where  they  are 
described,  will  enable  any  readers  to  choose  what  they  like  ;  but  those  which  are 
specially  desirable  are  marked  with  an  asterisk. 

*  "The  Photographs, — as  well  as  the  complete  book,  price  5s.,  v>?hich  contains 
four  steel  engravings  and  the  plan  of  the  Western  Porches — may  be  obtained  of 
George  Allen,  156,  Charing  Cross  Road,  London." 

Then  follows  the  list  of  photographs  1-25,  the  numbers  being  now 
changed  so  as  to  agree  with  the  arrangement  in  the  Appendix  to  The  Bible 
of  Amiens.  At  the  end  of  the  last  page  is  the  date  "August  1897"  and 
Messrs.  Ballantyne's  imprint. 

Fourth  Edition  (May  1898). — This  is  a  reprint  of  the  edition  last  de- 
scribed, the  pages  being  numbered  1-4.  The  setting  of  the  heading  shows 
some  trifling  alterations,  and  at  the  end  of  p.  4  is  (instead  of  the  printers' 
imprint):  ''^ George  Allen,  |  156,  Charing  Cross  Road,  London  |  May  1898." 
This  "Advice"  is  still  current,  and  it  is  the  numbers  given  in  the  Ap- 
pendix to  The  Bible  of  Amiens  (and  in  eds.  3  and  4  of  the  "Advice")  that 
should  be  quoted  in  ordering  the  photographs. 

An  edition  set  up  in  France. — This  (called  in  the  heading  "Second 
Edition  ")  is  a  combination  of  the  English  editions  2  and  3,  with  an  addi- 
tion, and  a  blunder,  of  its  own.  The  heading  corresponds  with  that  of 
ed.  2  (except  for  the  addition  of  "  Second  Edition  ").  Tlie  text  also  follows 
that  of  ed.  2,  except  that  it  adds  the  following  note  on  p.  1  :  "This 
chapter  and  the  entire  Work,  containing  four  steel  engravings  and  plan 
of  the  Western  Porches,  price  6s.,  may  be  obtained  of  George  Allen, 
Orpington,  Kent,  and  8,  Bell  Yard,  Temple  Bar,  London."  The  list  of 
photographs  follows  the  numbers  in  the  Appendix  to  The  Bible  of  Amiens ; 
but  although  this  alteration  is  made,  the  prefatory  note  is  retained,  as  if 
the  two  lists  still  differed. 

PHOTOGRAPHS 

The  photographs  mentioned  in  the  "Advice"  were  thus  sold  by  Mr. 
Ward  (as  announced  in  successive  issues  of  his  List)  : — 

THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 

Twenty-five  Photographs  to  illustrate  the  above,  unmounted      .    each  £0   5  0 

The  set  of  21  4    4  0 

The  set  of  25    .       .       .       .       *  .       ,       .  .550 

The  Life  of  St.  Firmin  050 

The  set  mounted  on  thick  toned  boards,  half  morocco,  lettered  folio, 

leather  flaps  extra  2   2  0 


THE  lUBLE  OF  AMIENS 

A  Fmirh  trantlatiou  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens  appeared  in  1903,  with  the 
following  titlo-page  :— 

Julm  llu>kin  |  |  Hible  d' Amiens  ]  Traduction,  Notes  et  Pre'face  | 
|Mr  Marrel  Proust  |  Paris  |  Societe  du  Mercure  de  France  |  XXVI., 
H,H.  i\v  XXVI. 

IssuimI  in  the  ordinary  yellow  paper  covers.  Price  8  fr.  50,  pp.  349.  M. 
l»ron«fs  introduction  ("  Avant-Propos ")  occupies  pp.  9-14,  and  his  Preface 
C'Notre-dame  d'Amiens  selon  Ruskin "),  pp.  15-95. 

A  f(nirth  edition  of  the  translation  is  dated  1904.  There  were  also 
isKucd  M'ven  «-opies  on  '^papier  de  Hollande." 

'Hiero  have  been  several  unauthorized  American  editions  of  The  Bible  of 
A  viitnx. 


Pfviews  (»f  The  Bible  of  Amiens  appeared  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
July  21,  1883  ('MVith  Mr.  Ruskin  at  Amiens";  see  also  an  illustrated 
article  in  the  Pal/  Mall  Gazette  of  August  10,  1886);  and  in  the  Art 
Journal,  N.S.,  vol.  ii.  pp.  205-207. 


Vari(P  Lediones. — The  principal  variations  in  the  text,  between  the 
several  editions  issued  by  Ruskin,  are  those  noted  in  the  list  of  "Corri- 
genda" issued  in  June  1885  Mith  Part  V.  These  related  for  the  most 
part  to  chapters  i.  and  ii.,  both  of  which  were  already  in  a  second  edition  ; 
the  last  four  corrections  were  of  mistakes  which  had  escaped  notice  in  the 
revision  in  1885  of  Chapter  iv.  References  to  the  present  edition  have 
been  added  to  the  list,  above  (p.  10),  and  it  is  therefore  unnecessary  to 
repeat  the  variations  here. 

These  corrections  (mainly,  though  not  entirely,  of  misprints)  were  noted 
by  Ruskin,  when  revising  the  book  in  1885.  At  the  same  time  he  made 
a  few  revisions  in  Chapters  iii.  and  iv.  The  following  is  a  list  of  them 
(not  including  some  minor  matters  of  punctuation  and  references)  : — 

Chapter  iii.  ^  1,  line  6,  the  word  circumstances  "  was  placed  in  inverted 
conmias.  §  15,  line  8,  "its"  was  italicised.  §  19,  the  note  t  was  added. 
§  28,  the  note  *  was  added.  §  29,  note,  the  last  words  (in  brackets) 
were  added.  §  33,  lines  3,  4,  "the  desire  .  .  .  universal"  were  italicised. 
§  39,  line  4,  "  presentation  .  .  .  authority  "  were  italicised.  §  39,  note  t, 
hust  line,  see  p.  110  w.  §  48,  note,  lines  23-26,  in  ed.  1  only  the  word 
"rather"  was  italicised. 

Chapter  iv.  The  author's  note  to  §  1  :read  in  ed.  1  :  "I  have  lost  my 
reference  to  the  place,  in  hiS  great  work,  the  Dictionary  of  Architecture, 
wlu're  this  expression  occurs ;  but  in  the  article  '  Cathedrale,'  where  a 
complete  account  of  the  plan  and  building  is  given,  it  is  called  (p.  330) 
M.'rglise  ogivale  par  excellence.'" 

In  the  autljor's  note  to  §  2,  the  last  passage  was  not  italicised. 

In  §  3,  last  line  but  one,  "compatriot"  was  " compatriote. " 

§  4,  line  5,  "that"  appeared  before  "in  the." 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


§  5,  line  15,  "trained"  was  not  italicised. 

§  12,  lines  16  and  17,  ed.  1  had  "...  about  the  edifice.  Robert  .  .  . 
no  stone  of  it.  But  when  .  .  ."  ;  line  23,  "not  at  all  that  of"  for  "not 
the  least  like  that  of." 

§  14,  author's  footnote,  "See  my  own  first  chapter"  for  "See  the  first 
chapter  of  this  book." 

§  23,  author's  footnote,  after  '^Les  deux  doigts  qui  manquent"  were 
the  words  "(do  they  so  still .^)" 

§  24,  the  fourth  line  of  Bishop  Everard's  epitaph  ran  :  "  A  pious  man, 
the  protector  of  the  afflicted  and  the  widow ;  of  the  orphan  ..." 

§  26,  the  second  line  of  Bishop  Geolfroy's  epitaph  ran:  "Whether  he 
seem  less  than,  or  like  to,  all  of  us." 

§  29,  line  14,  "James  the  less"  for  "James  the  Bishop." 

§  36,  in  the  author's  footnote  t,  the  reference  to  Viollet-le-Duc  was 
"...  article  '  Sculpture ' "  ;  footnote  J,  line  5,  " .  .  .  not  ranks,  except 
that  the  cherubim  are  in  the  Byzantine  circle  first.  .  .  ." 

In  §§  39  seq.j  black  letters  were  substituted  on  the  occasion  of  this 
revision. 

§  39,  6  B,  "Heresy"  instead  of  "Atheism." 
§  40,  25  B,  "locusts"  instead  of  "beasts." 

§  42,  the  author's  footnote  ended,  "...  the  photograph,  No.  4  of  my 
series.    (See  terminal  announcements.)" 

§  43,  line  2,  after  "minor  prophets,"  ".  .  .  ;  see  in  my  series  of 
photographs,  Nos.  15  to  18." 

§  44,  the  saints  enumerated  had  no  numbers ;  neither  had  the  months 
in  §  47. 

§  47,  lines  12  and  13  ran  :  " .  .  .  as  I  have  arranged  them,  this  series 
of  signs  and  months  are  Nos.  11-14,  each  containing  six  quatrefoils  read- 
ing round  the  porch  from  left  to  right ;  and  the  bas-reliefs  may  be  studied 
in  them  nearly  as  well.  ..." 

§  49,  author's  footnote,  the  reference  to  Stones  of  Venice  was  erroneously 
to  "first"  volume. 

§§  50,  51,  there  were  no  numbers  to  the  statues  and  quatrefoils  (except 
that  those  now  numbered  35,  36,  37  were  numbered  "  1,  2,  3." 

§  50,  Nos.  30,  31,  33,  "The  Madonna"  in  each  case,  instead  of 
"  Virgin." 

Next,  a  few  alterations  were  made  by  Mr.  Wedderburn  in  editing  the 
Small  Edition  (see  above,  p.  10)  for  Ruskin  in  1897.  Thus,  the  note  to 
ch.  i.  §  34  was  then  added.  In  ch.  ii.  §  47  n.,  line  4,  "engineer"  (in  the 
quotation  from  Gibbon)  was  corrected  to  "engineers."  §  49,  a  reference 
to  Gibbon  "(6,297)" — now  restored — was  omitted.  The  sections  in  ch.  i, 
were  numbered.  The  references  to  the  pages  in  Appendix  I.  were  altered 
(see  above,  p.  11).  An  explanatory  note  was  added  towards  the  beginning 
of  Appendix  II. 

In  the  present  edition,  the  following  alterations  and  corrections  (other 
than  minor  matters  of  spelling,  punctuation,  and  references)  liave  been 
made: — • 

Quotations  from  other  books  are  as  usual  in  this  edition  set  in  sm.aller 
type. 

XXXIII.  B 


18 


THE  mm.E  OF  AMIENS 


Ch.  i.  §  14,  iRKt  lilies,  see  p.  35  n. 

Ch.  i.  8  ^>        ^^'"^^^  "common"  is  inserted  before  ^'post- 

houwj"  ill  accordance  with  Iluskin's  own  copy  of  the  book. 

Cli.  i.  5^  2,3  II. ,  the  reference  to  Mrs.  Jameson  has  hitherto  been  erro- 
MOtisly  K>ven  as  ''p.  721,"  and  in     28  n.,  aa  ^'p.  722." 

Ch.  ii.  §  Hue  41,  "  Nor  "  is  Iluskin's  correction  in  his  copy  for  "Since, 
not."  |i  ft,  line  17,  "are,"  wliich  has  hitherto  appeared  in  all  eds.  (un- 
jrrftinniHtirallv),  was  struck  out  by  him.  §  7,  Hues  7  and  8,  he  italicised 
••bflief  insto.id  of  "credible"  (as  in  all  eds.  hitherto).  §  10,  last  line 
hut  one.  Iio  substituted  "north"  for  "one  side."  §  20,  line  15,  the 
punctuation  liitherto  lias  obscured  the  sense  ("the  Rosin  mountain^ 
'Hart/'  bhndowy  still  to  the  north  .  .  .").  Hartz  is  the  Rosin  mountain. 
§  24,  line  24,  "\\'artburg"  is  a  correction  for  "Wartzburg."  §  32, 
iiiies  15,  10,  the  place  of  the  quotation  marks  has  here  been  altered,  to 
correspond  with  actual  quotations  from  Favine.  §  25,  line  10,  for  an 
iiiiI>ortant  correction  here,  see  p.  65  n.  §  42,  last  line,  Ruskin  in  his 
copy  itiiicises  "rises."  §  43,  line  18,  he  struck  out  an  "and"  after 
"  our  own  day,"  which,  curiously,  has  stood  in  all  eds.  hitherto.  §  44, 
lines  5-7,  the  punctuation  is  here  revised  in  accordance  with  Ruskin's 
copy. 

Ch.  iii.  §  17  n.,  "  W.  G.  Palgrave  "  is  a  correction  for  "Sir  F.  Palgrave." 

Ch.  iv.  28,  in  place  of  the  editorial  note,  there  was  in  editions  after 
the  note  "*  See  now  the  plan  at  the  end  of  this  chapter." 
41,  G  A,  "grandest"  was  misprinted  "grandes"  in  the  small  edition; 
8  A,  "fahn"  has  hitherto  been  misprinted  "fahr." 

Appendix  1.  For  an  error  in  some  previous  editions,  see  above,  p.  11. 
The  list  has  now  been  corrected  and  supplemented,  and  references  to  the 
[uigcs  of  the  present  volume  are  added. 

Appendix  II.  Some  confusion  has  been  caused  by  the  use  of  the  same 
black-letter  numerals  both  for  Ruskin's  index  numbers  of  the  statues  (as 
shown  on  his  Plan),  and  for  the  numbers  (which  do  not  correspond)  of 
his  series  of  photographs.  In  this  edition  the  black-letter  is  reserved  for 
the  former  numerals.  References  to  the  Plates  on  which  the  photographs 
are  reproduced  are  added.  For  a  misprint  of  "13^'  for  "18,"  see  above, 
p.  0.] 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface  .       .       .       •       ...       .        .       .       .  .21 

CHAPTER  I 

By  the  Rivers  of  Waters    ........  25 

NOTES  TO  chapter  I.  ........  48 

CHAPTER  II 

Under  the  Drachenfels       ...  .       .        ,       .  53 

CHAPTER  III 

The  Lion  Tamer   ..........  87 

CHAPTER  IV 

Interpretations     .       .       .       .       .        .       .  .  .121 

APPENDICES 

I.  Chronological  List  of  Principal  Events  referred  to  in 

"The  Bible  of  Amiens"     .       .       .       .       .       .  .177 

II.  References  Explanatory  of  Photographs  to  Chapter  IV.  .  178 

III.  General  Plan  of  ^'Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us"       .       .  186 


19 


PREFACE 


1.  The  long  abandoned  purpose,  of  which  the  following 
pages  begin  some  attempt  at  fulfilment,  has  been  resumed 
at  the  request  of  a  young  EngHsh  governess/  that  I  would 
write  some  pieces  of  history  which  her  pupils  could  gather 
some  good  out  of ; — the  fruit  of  historical  documents  placed 
by  modern  educational  systems  at  her  disposal,  being  to 
them  labour  only,  and  sorrow.^ 

What  else  may  be  said  for  the  book,  if  it  ever  become 
one,  it  must  say  for  itself :  preface,  more  than  this,  I  do 
not  care  to  write :  and  the  less,  because  some  passages  of 
British  history,  at  this  hour  under  record,^  call  for  instant, 
though  brief,  comment. 

I  am  told  that  the  Queen's  Guards  have  gone  to 
Ireland ;  playing  God  save  the  Queen."  And  being,  (as 
I  have  declared  myself  in  the  course  of  som.e  letters  to 
which  public  attention  has  been  lately  more  than  enough 
directed,^)  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge,  the  staunchest 
Conservative  in  England,  I  am  disposed  gravely  to  question 
the  propriety  of  the  mission  of  the  Queen's  Guards  on 
the  employment  commanded  them.  My  own  Conservative 
notion  of  the  function  of  the  Guards  is  that  they  should 

1  [Miss  Jessie  Leete,  who  had  first  written  to  Ruskiii  in  this  same  year  (1880), 
and  was  afterwards  a  guest  at  Brantwood.] 
^  [Psalms  xc.  10.] 

^  [Ruskin  wrote  this  Preface,  as  his  diary  shows,  in  December  1880.  The  "  land 
war "  organised  by  the  Irish  Land  League  was  then  raging  ;  Captain  Boycott  was 
being  besieged  (November)  ;  agrarian  outrages  M'ere  frequent ;  and  the  Times  of 
December  23  reported  "the  departure  of  several  battalions  of  the  Household  Troops 
for  service  in  Ireland."] 

^  [The  letters  written  in  June,  September,  and  October  1880  with  reference  to 
the  Lord  Rectorship  of  Glasgow  University ;  reprinted  in  Arrows  of  the  Chace,  1880, 
vol.  ii.  pp.  282-284,  and  in  Vol.  XXXIV.  of  this  edition.] 

21 


.»•) 


THE  lUBLE  OF  AMIENS 


^ruar.i  the  Quceirs  throne  iind  life,  when  threatened  either 
by  (ioincstic  or  forei^rn  enemy:  but  not  that  they  should 
become  a  substitute  for  her  inefficient  police  force,  in  the 
execution  of  her  domiciliary  laws. 

•J.  And  si  ill  less  so,  if  the  domicihary  laws  which  they 
arc  sent  to  execute,  playing  "God  save  the  Queen,"  be 
pcrcliance  precisely  contrary  to  that  God  the  Saviour's  law; 
and  therefore,  such  as,  in  the  long  run,  no  quantity  either 
of  Queens,  or  Queen's  men,  could  execute.  Which  is  a 
question  I  have  for  these  ten  years  been  endeavouring  to 
get  the  British  public  to  consider — vainly  enough  hitherto; 
and  will  not  at  present  add  to  my  own  many  words  on 
the  matter.^  But  a  book  has  just  been  published  by  a 
liritish  officer,  who,  if  he  had  not  been  otherwise  and 
more  actively  employed,  could  not  only  have  written  all  my 
hooks  about  landscape  and  picture,  but  is  very  singularly 
also  of  one  mind  with  me,  (God  knows  of  how  few  English- 
men I  can  now  say  so,)  on  matters  regarding  the  Queen's 
safety,  and  the  Nation's  honour.  Of  whose  book  {Far  Out: 
Kovin^'s  Retold)  since  various  passages  will  be  given  in 
my  subsequent  terminal  notes,  I  will  content  myself  with 
quoting  for  the  end  of  my  Preface,  the  memorable  words 
which  Colonel  Butler  himself  quotes,  as  spoken  to  the 
ih-itish  Parliament  by  its  last  Conservative  leader,  a  British 
officer  who  had  also  served  with  honour  and  success. 

3.  The  Duke  of  IV^eliington  said :  "  It  is  already  well 

'  [See,  e.g.,  Morningft  in  Florence,  §  135  (13),  Vol.  XXIII.  p.  426,  and  Fors 
Clavigera,  Letters  7  and  10  (Vol.  XXVII.  pp.  131,  180).] 

^  [A  collection  of  ])apers  of  travel,  published  in  1880  by  Lieutenant-Colonel  (now 
(ieneral  Sir)  \\\  F.  Butler,  autlior  of  The  Great  Lone  Land,  The  Wild  North  Land, 
etc.  The  supposed  quotation  from  the  Duke  of  Wellington  is  at  pp.  304-305  (in 
a  paper  entitled  A  Plea  for  the  Peasant").  The  prohibition  against  the  enlist- 
ment of  Roman  Catholic  soldiers  was  removed  in  1800,  and  ''\n  the  fourteen  years 
of  war  following,  not  less  tlian  100,000  Irish  peasants  offered  for  the  army."  *  For 
other  (luotations  from  Sir  H'illiam  Butler's  book,  see  below,  p.  49  ;  and  A  Knighfs 
Faxth,  eh.  xii.  (Vol.  XXXI.  p.  480  n.).  "In  a  letter  written  to  his  friend,  Ruskin 
said  :  •  Heaven  knows  you  could  have  written  all  my  books,  if  you  hadn't  been  at 
harder  work,"  adding,  '  I  am  profoundly  thankful  for  the  blessing  of  power  that 
IN  MOW  united  in  your  wife  and  you.  What  may  you  not  do  for  England,  the 
tw.»  of  you!'"  {Daily  Chronicle,  October  £4,  1901)."  Sir  William  Butler  had  in 
IB/ 7  married  Miss  Elizabeth  Thompson,  the  artist,  for  whom   see   Vol.  XIV. 

|)p.  3(w;,  vm.]  ' 


PREFACE 


23 


known  to  your  Lordships  that  of  the  troops  which  our 
gracious  Sovereign  did  me  the  honour  to  entrust  to  my 
command  at  various  periods  during  the  war — a  war  under- 
taken for  the  express  purpose  of  securing  the  happy  institu- 
tions and  independence  of  the  country — at  least  one  half 
were  Roman  Catholics.  My  Lords,  when  I  call  your  re- 
collection to  this  fact  I  am  sure  all  further  eulogy  is 
unnecessary.  Your  Lordships  are  well  aware  for  what 
length  of  period  and  under  what  difficult  circumstances 
they  maintained  the  Empire  buoyant  upon  the  flood  which 
overwhelmed  the  thrones  and  wrecked  the  institutions  of 
every  other  people ; — how  they  kept  alive  the  only  spark 
of  freedom  which  was  left  unextinguished  in  Europe.  .  .  . 
My  Lords,  it  is  mainly  to  the  Irish  Catholics  that  we  all 
owe  our  proud  predominance  in  our  military  career,  and 
that  I  personally  am  indebted  for  the  laurels  with  which 
you  have  been  pleased  to  decorate  my  brow.  .  .  .  We  must 
confess,  my  Lords,  that  without  Catholic  blood  and  Catholic 
valour  no  victory  could  ever  have  been  obtained,  and  the 
first  military  talents  might  have  been  exerted  in  vain."^ 

4.  Let  these  noble  words  of  tender  Justice  be  the  first 
example  to  my  young  readers  of  what  all  History  ought 
to  be.  It  has  been  told  them,  in  The  Laws  of  Fesole, 
that  all  great  Art  is  Praise.^    So  is  all  faithful  History, 

^  [The  attribution  of  these  words  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington  cannot  be  accepted. 
Sir  William  Butler  made  his  extracts  from  a  speech  as  printed  at  pp.  615-616  n. 
of  J.  C.  O'Callaghan's  History  of  the  Irish  Brigades  (Glasgow,  1870),  where  it  is 
given  as  spoken  by  the  Duke  '^^in  1829  when  addressing  the  House  of  Lords  in 
favour  of  Catholic  emancipation."  But  O'Callaghan  (who  does  not  give  his 
authority)  was  mistaken.  No  such  words  occur  in  any  of  the  numerous  reports 
of  the  Duke's  speeches  on  Catholic  emancipation^  and  the  rhetoric  would  have 
been  uncongenial  to  him.  In  the  House  of  Commons  cn  February  22,  1837  (on 
an  Irish  Municipal  Reform  Bill),  Richard  Lalor  Shell,  referring  to  Lord  Lyndhurst's 
description  of  the  Irish  as  "aliens,"  exclaimed  that  the  Duke  ought  to  have  risen 
from  his  seat  at  the  word  and  said  that  he  ^^liad  seen  the  aliens  do  their  duty." 
Shell  then  followed  with  a  celebrated  passage  describing  the  speech  which  the 
Duke  might  have  made.  Sheil's  oration  may  be  found  in  the  volume  of  his 
speeches  edited  by  Thomas  Macnevin  (Dublin,  1845),  and  the  passage  in  question 
is  included  in  Bell's  Standard  Elocutionist.  It  is  precisely  similar  in  sentiment  to 
the  apocryphal  speech  attributed  by  O'Callaghan,  Butler,  and  Ruskin  to  the  Duke, 
but  the  rhetoric  is  finer  and  more  impassioned.  O'Callaghan's  quotation  may  have 
come  from  some  other  rhetorical  exercise  of  the  kind,  but  search  both  at  Dublin 
and  in  the  British  Museum  has  failed  to  discover  its  source.] 

^  [See  Vol.  XV,  p.  351.] 


24 


THE  IHBLE  OF  AMIENS 


iiiid  all  hii^^h  Philosophy.  For  these  three,  Art,  History, 
and  riiilosophy,  arc  each  but  one  part  of  the  Heavenly 
Wisdom,  which  sees  not  as  man  seeth,  but  with  Eternal 
Charity;  and  because  she  rejoices  not  in  Iniquity,  therefore 
rejoices  in  the  Truth. ^ 

For  true  knowledge  is  of  A^irtues  only:^  of  poisons  and 
vices,  it  is  Hecate  who  teaches,  not  Athena.  And  of  all 
wisdom,  chieliy  the  Politician's  must  consist  in  this  divine 
Prudence;  it  is  not,  indeed,  always  necessary  for  men  to 
know  the  virtues  of  their  friends,  or  their  masters ;  since 
the  friend  will  still  manifest,  and  the  master  use.  But  woe 
to  the  Nation  which  is  too  cruel  to  cherish  the  virtue 
of  its  subjects,  and  too  cowardly  to  recognize  that  of  its 
enemies ! 


^  [1  Samuel  xvi.  7  ;  1  Corinthians  xiii.  6.] 

•  [Conipare  IHeaaures  of  England,  §  20  (below,  p.  431).] 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


CHAPTER  I 


BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS  ^ 


1.  The  intelligent  English  traveller,  in  this  fortunate  age 
for  him,  is  aware  that,  half-way  between  Boulogne  and 
Paris,  there  is  a  complex  railway-station,  into  which  his 
train,  in  its  relaxing  speed,  rolls  him  with  many  more  than 
the  average  number  of  bangs  and  bumps  prepared,  in  the 
access  of  every  important  French  gave,  to  startle  the  drowsy 
or  distrait  passenger  into  a  sense  of  his  situation. 

He  probably  also  remembers  that  at  this  halting-place 
in  mid-journey  there  is  a  well-served  buffet,  at  which  he 
has  the  privilege  of  "  Dix  minutes  d'arret." 

He  is  not,  however,  always  so  distinctly  conscious  that 
these  ten  minutes  of  arrest  are  granted  to  him  within  not 
so  many  minutes'  walk  of  the  central  square  of  a  city 
which  was  once  the  Venice  of  France. 

2.  Putting  the  lagoon  islands  out  of  question,  the 
French  River-Queen  was  nearly  as  large  in  compass  as 
Venice  herself;  and  divided,  not  by  slow  currents  of  ebbing 
and  returning  tide,  but  by  eleven  beautiful  trout  streams, 
of  which  some  four  or  five  are  as  large,  each  separately,  as 
our  Surrey  Wandle,^  or  as  Isaac  Walton's  Dove ;  and  which, 
branching  out  of  one  strong  current  above  the  city,  and 
uniting  again  after  they  have  eddied  through  its  streets, 
are  bordered,  as  they  flow  down,  (fordless  except  where  the 

V  [Song  of  Solomon,  v.  12.] 

2  [For  other  references  to  the  Wandle,  see  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  385,  and  the  first 
chapter  of  Prcetenta.'] 


25 


20 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


two  Edwards  rode  them,  the  day  before  Crecy,^)  to  the 
sands  of  St.  ^^alery,  by  groves  of  aspen,  and  glades  of 
})()plar,'  whose  grace  and  gladness  seem  to  spring  in  every 
stately  avenue  instinct  with  the  image  of  the  just  man's! 
life, — *'Erit  tanquam  lignum  quod  plantatum  est  secus, 
decursus  aquarum."^ 

l^ut  the  Venice  of  Picardy  owed  her  name,  not  to  the 
beauty  of  her  streams  merely,  but  to  their  burden.  She 
was  a  worker,  like  the  Adriatic  princess,  in  gold  and  glass, 
in  stone,  wood,  and  ivory;  she  was  skilled  like  an  Egyp- 
tian in  the  weaving  of  fine  linen;  dainty  as  the  maids  oi 
Judah  in  divers  colours  of  needlework.  And  of  these,  the 
fruits  of  her  hands,  praising  her  in  her  own  gates,  she  sent 
also  portions  to  stranger  nations,  and  her  fame  went  out 
into  all  lands.' 

"Vn  reglement  de  rechevina<,'e,  du  12^^  avril  1566,  fait  voir  qu'on 
fabriquait  a  cette  epoque  [a  Amiens,  des  sati?is  changeants  da7nasses,\^  des 
velours  de  toates  couleurs  pour  meubles,  des  colombettes  a  grands  et  petiU 
carreaux  ;  des  burailles  croisees,  qu'on  expediait  en  Allemagne,  en  EspagnCj 
en  Turquie  et  en  Barbaric  ! "  ^ 

All-coloured  velvets,  pearl -iridescent  colombettes!  (1 
wonder  what  they  may  be?)  and  sent  to  vie  with  the 
variegated  carpet  of  the  Turk,  and  glow  upon  the  arab- 
esque towers  of  Barbary !  t  Was  not  this  a  phase  of  pro- 
vincial  Picard  life  which  an  intelligent  English  travellei 
might  do  well  to  inquire  into?    Why  should  this  fountair 

*  M.  H.  Dusevel,  Histoire  de  la  Ville  d' Amiens.  Amiens,  Caron  et  Lam 
bert,  1848  ;  p.  '305.    [Vol.  i.  p.  533,  ed.  1832.] 

t  Carpaccio  trusts  for  the  chief  splendour  of  any  festa  in  cities  to  the 
patterns  of  the  draperies  hung  out  of  windows.^ 

'  [See  Vol.  XIX.  p,  'Mn^  " 
p  423  J^"^^^^^'  ^^^^^  po})lars  of  Amiens,  Vol.  V.  p.  237,  and  Vol.  VI 

3  [Psalms  i.  3;  quoted  also  in  Lectures  on  Art,  §  118  (Vol.  XX.  p.  109).] 
^  I  bee  Judges  v.  30 ;  Proverbs  xxxi.  31  ;  1  Chronicles  xiv.  17.] 
[1  he  words  now  niserted  in  brackets  in  the  above  quotation  were  omitted  b) 
Kuskin     He  takes  "colombettes"  to  mean  httle  doves  (hence  "pearl-iridescent") 
I  oiombelles     is,  however,  the  word  which  bears  that  meaning.    Littre  throw; 
no  iigiit  on  the  u^e  of  "  colombettes "  (ordinarily  meaning  a  kind  of  mushroom; 
or     colombelles"  in  the  present  connexion.! 
[Compare  Vol.  XXIV.  pp.  342-343  ] 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS 


27 


)f  rainbows  leap  up  suddenly  here  by  Somme ;  and  a  little 
Prankish  maid  write  herself  the  sister  of  Venice,  and  the 
;ervant  of  Carthage  and  of  Tyre? 

.3.  And  if  she,  why  not  others  also  of  our  northern 
/illages  ?  Has  the  intelligent  traveller  discerned  anything, 
n  the  country,  or  in  its  shores,  on  his  way  from  the  gate 
3f  Calais  to  the  gave  of  Amiens,  of  special  advantage  for 
artistic  design,  or  for  commercial  enterprise  ?  He  has  seen 
league  after  league  of  sandy  dunes.  We  also, .  we,  have 
our  sands  by  Severn,  by  Lune,  by  Sol  way.  He  has  seen 
extensive  plains  of  useful  and  not  unfragrant  peat, — an 
article  sufficiently  accessible  also  to  our  Scotch  and  Irish 
industries.  He  has  seen  many  a  broad  down  and  jutting 
cliff  of  purest  chalk ;  but,  opposite,  the  perfide  Albion 
gleams  no  whit  less  blanche  beyond  the  blue.  Pure  waters 
he  has  seen,  issuing  out  of  the  snowy  rock;  but  are  ours 
less  bright  at  Croydon,  at  Guildford,  or  at  Winchester  ? 
And  yet  one  never  heard  of  treasures  sent  from  Sol  way 
sands  to  African;  nor  that  the  builders  at  Romsey  could 
give  lessons  in  colour  to  the  builders  at  Granada?  What 
can  it  be,  in  the  air  or  the  earth — in  her  stars  or  in  her 
sunlight — that  fires  the  heart  and  quickens  the  eyes  of  the 
little  white-capped  Amienoise  soubrette,  till  she  can  match 
herself  against  Penelope?^ 

4.  The  intelligent  English  traveller  has  of  course  no 
time  to  waste  on  any  of  these  questions.  But  if  he  has 
bought  his  ham-sandwich,  and  is  ready  for  the  "  En  voiture, 
messieurs,"  he  may  perhaps  condescend  for  an  instant  to 
hear  what  a  lounger  about  the  place,  neither  wasteful  of 
his  time,  nor  sparing  of  it,  can  suggest  as  worth  looking 
at,  when  his  train  glides  out  of  the  station. 

He  will  see  first,  and  doubtless  with  the  respectful 
admiration  which  an  Englishman  is  bound  to  bestow  upon 
such  objects,  the  coal-sheds  and  carriage-sheds  of  the  station 
itself,  extending  in  their  ashy  and  oily  splendours  for  about 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  out  of  the  town ;  and  then,  just  as  the 

1  [Compare  '"The  Story  of  Arachue/'  §  18  (Vol.  XX.  p.  375).] 


..8  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

i 

train  gets  into  speed,  under  a  large  chimney  tower,  which' 
he  cannot  see  to  nearly  the  top  of,  but  will  feel  overcast 
})y  the  shadow  of  its  smoke,  he  may  see,  if  he  will  trust 
liis  intelhgent  head  out  of  the  window,  and  look  back,  | 
fifty  or  fifty-one  (I  am  not  sure  of  my  count  to  a  unit) 
similar  chimneys,  all  similarly  smoking,  all  with  similar 
works  attached,  oblongs  of  brown  brick  wall,  with  portholes 
numberless  of  black  square  window.  But  in  the  midst  of 
these  fifty  tall  things  that  smoke,  he  will  see  one,  a  little 
taller  than  any,  and  more  dehcate,  that  does  not  smoke  ;^ 
and  in  the  midst  of  these  fifty  masses  of  blank  wall, 
enclosing  works" — and  doubtless  producing  works  profit- 
able and  honourable  to  France  and  the  world — he  will  see 
one  mass  of  wall — not  blank,  but  strangely  wrought  by 
the  hands  of  foolish  men  of  long  ago,  for  the  purpose  of 
enclosing  or  producing  no  manner  of  profitable  work  what- 
soever, but  one —  j 

**  This  is  the  work  of  God ;  that  ye  should  believe  onj  I 
Him  whom  He  hath  sent ! "  ^  | 

5.  Leaving  the  intelligent  traveller  now  to  fulfil  his  vow 
of  pilgrimage  to  Paris, — or  wherever  else  God  may  be 
sending  him, — I  will  suppose  that  an  intelhgent  Eton  boy 
or  two,^  or  thoughtful  English  girl,  may  care  quietly  to 
walk  with  me  as  far  as  this  same  spot  of  commanding 
view,  and  to  consider  what  the  workless — shall  we  say  also 
worthless? — building,  and  its  unshadowed  minaret,  may 
perhaps  farther  mean. 

Minaret  I  have  called  it,  for  want  of  better  English 
word.  Fleche — arrow — is  its  proper  name ;  vanishing  into 
the  air  you  know  not  where,  by  the  mere  fineness  of  it. 
Flameless— motionless — hurtless — the  fine  arrow;  unplumed, 
unpoisoned,  and  unbarbed;  aimless  —  shall  we  say  also, 
readers  young  and  old,  travelUng  or  abiding?    It,  and  the 

^  [Compare  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  §  73  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  448).l 
«  [John  vi.  29.]  y        J  A 

[Some  part  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens  had  originally  been  given  as  a  lecture  at 
Ktou  College  :  see  the  Bibliographical  Note,  above,  p.  5.] 


Ill 


Th.e  Catliedral  of  Amiens 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS  29 

j 

!  walls  it  rises  from — what  have  they  once  meant?  What 
meaning  have  they  left  in  them  yet,  for  you,  or  for  the 
people  that  live  round  them,  and  never  look  up  as  they 
pass  by? 

Suppose  we  set  ourselves  first  to  learn  how  they  came 
there. 

6.  At  the  birth  of  Christ,  all  this  hillside,  and  the 
brightly-watered  plain  below,  with  the  corn-yellow  cham- 
paign above,  were  inhabited  by  a  Druid-taught  race,  wild 

i  enough  in  thoughts  and  ways,  but  under  Roman  govern- 
ment, and  gradually  becoming  accustomed  to  hear  the  names, 
and  partly  to  confess  the  power,  of  Roman  gods.  For  three 
hundred  years  after  the  birth  of  Christ  they  heard  the  name 
of  no  other  God. 

Three  hundred  years !  and  neither  apostles  nor  inheritors 
of  apostleship  had  yet  gone  into  all  the  world  and  preached 
the  gospel  to  every  creature.^  Here,  on  their  peaty  ground, 
the  wild  people,  still  trusting  in  Pomona  for  apples,  in 

I  Silvanus  for  acorns,  in  Ceres  for  bread,  and  in  Proserpina 
for  rest,  hoped  but  the  season's  blessing  from  the  Gods 
of  Harvest,  and  feared  no  eternal  anger  from  the  Queen 
of  Death. 

But  at  last,  three  hundred  years  being  past  and  gone, 
in  the  year  of  Christ  301,  there  came  to  this  hillside  of 
I  Amiens,  on  the  sixth  day  of  the  Ides  of  October,  the 
Messenger  of  a  new  Life. 

7.  His  name,  Firminius  (I  suppose)  in  Latin,  Firmin 
j  in  French, — so  to  be  remembered  here  in  Picardy.  Firmin, 

i  not  Firminius ;  as  Denis,  not  Dionysius ;  coming  out  of 
I  space — no  one  tells  what  part  of  space.  But  received  by 
i  the  pagan  Amienois  with  surprised  welcome,  and  seen  of 
I  them — Forty  days — many  days,  we  may  read — preaching 
I  acceptably,  and  binding  with  baptismal  vows  even  persons 
in  good  society:  and  that  in  such  numbers,  that  at  last 
he  is  accused  to  the  Roman  governor,  by  the  priests  of 


1  [See  Mark  xvi.  15.] 


80  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

Jupiter  and  Mercury,  as  one  turning  the  world  upside-down.^ 
And  in  the  last  day  of  the  Forty— or  of  the  indefinite 
many  meant  by  Forty — he  is  beheaded,  as  martyrs  ought 
to  be,  and  his  ministrations  in  a  mortal  body  ended. 

The  old,  old  story,  you  say?  Be  it  so;  you  will  the 
more  easily  remember  it.  The  Amienois  remembered  it 
so  carefully,  that,  twelve  hundred  years  afterwards,  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  they  thought  good  to  carve  and  paint 
the  four  stone  pictures,  Nos.  1,  2,  3,  and  4  of  our  first  choir 
photograph.^  Scene  1st,  St.  Firmin  arriving;  scene  2nd, 
St.  Firmin  preaching;  scene  3rd,  St.  Firmin  baptizing;  and 
scene  4th,  St.  Firmin  beheaded,  by  an  executioner  with  very 
red  legs,  and  an  attendant  dog  of  the  character  of  the  dog 
in  Faust  of  whom  we  may  have  more  to  say  presently.^ 

8.  Following  in  the  meantime  the  tale  of  St.  Firmin, 
as  of  old  time  known,  his  body  was  received,  and  buried, 
by  a  Roman  senator,  his  disciple  (a  kind  of  Joseph  ol 
Arimathea  to  St.  Firmin),  in  the  Roman  senator's  own 
garden.  Who  also  built  a  little  oratory  over  his  grave.' 
The  Roman  senator's  son  built  a  church  to  replace  the 
oratory,  dedicated  it  to  Our  Lad}^  of  Martyrs,  and  estab- 
lished it  as  an  episcopal  seat — the  first  of  the  French 
nation's.  A  very  notable  spot  for  the  French  nation 
surely?  One  deserving,  perhaps,  some  little  memory  oi 
monument, — cross,  tablet,  or  the  like  ?  Where,  therefore 
do  you  suppose  this  first  cathedral  of  French  Christianit) 
stood,  and  with  what  monument  has  it  been  honoured  ? 

It  stood  where  we  now  stand,  companion  mine,  who- 
ever you  may  be ;  and  the  monument  wherewith  it  ha^ 
been  honoured  is  this — chimney,  whose  gonfalon  of  smokt 

1  [Acts  xvii.  6.] 

2  [Plate  IV.  For  the  list  of  photographs  issued  in  connexion  with  The  BihU 
of  AmienSj  see  below,  pp.  178-181.] 

3  [Ruskin  does  not,  however,  return  to  the  dog,  nor  indeed  to  the  exterioi 
decoration  of  the  choir-screen  at  all.  But  he  had  employed  Mr.  Randal  to  mak( 
draAvings  of  two  dogs  (which  he  called  respectively  "The  Fine  Lady's  Dog"  ant 
"The  Executioner's"),  sculptured  in  the  scenes  describing  the  life  of  St.  Firmin 
and  these  were  engraved  to  illustrate  the  intended  further  notice.  The  Plate  ii 
now  included  (V.).  The  "fine  lady's  dog"  is  in  one  of  the  scenes  on  the  othe; 
side  of  the  choir.] 

I 

i 
j 


1 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS 


31 


overshadows  us — the  latest  effort  of  modern  art  in  Amiens, 
the  chimney  of  St.  Acheul/ 

The  first  cathedral,  you  observe,  of  the  French  nation ; 
more  accurately,  the  first  germ  of  cathedral  /or  the  French 
nation — who  are  not  yet  here;  only  this  grave  of  a  martyr 
is  here,  and  this  church  of  Our  Lady  of  Martyrs,  abiding 
on  the  hillside,  till  the  Roman  power  pass  away. 

Falling  together  with  it,  and  trampled  down  by  savage 
tribes,  alike  the  city  and  the  shrine;  the  grave  forgotten, — 
when  at  last  the  Franks  themselves  pour  from  the  north, 
and  the  utmost  wave  of  them,  lapping  along  these  downs 
of  Somme,  is  here  stayed,  and  the  Frankish  standard 
planted,  and  the  French  kingdom  throned. 

9.  Here  their  first  capital,  here  the  first  footsteps  of 
the  Frank  in  his  France !  Think  of  it.  All  over  the  south 
are  Gauls,  Burgundians,  Bretons,  heavier-hearted  nations  of 
sullen  mind ; — at  their  outmost  brim  and  border,  here  at 
last  are  the  Franks,  the  source  of  all  Franchise,^  for  this 
our  Europe.  You  have  heard  the  word  in  England,  before 
now,  but  English  word  for  it  is  none !  Honesty  we  have 
of  our  own ;  but  Frankness  we  must  learn  of  these :  nay, 
all  the  western  nations  of  us  are  in  a  few  centuries  more 
to  be  known  by  this  name  of  Frank.  Franks,  of  Paris 
that  is  to  be,  in  time  to  come ;  but  French  of  Paris  is  in 
year  of  grace  500  an  unknown  tongue  in  Paris,  as  much 
as  in  Stratford-att-ye-Bowe.  French  of  Amiens  is  the 
kingly  and  courtly  form  of  Christian  speech,  Paris  lying 
yet  in  Lutetian  clay,  to  develop  into  tile-field,^  perhaps, 
in  due  time.  Here,  by  soft-glittering  Somme,  reign  Clovis 
and  his  Clotilde. 

And  by  St.  Firmin's  grave  speaks  now  another  gentle 

*  The  first  fixed  and  set-down  footsteps ;  wandering  tribes  called  of 
Franks,  had  overswept  the  country,  and  recoiled,  again  and  again.  But  this 
invasion  of  the  so-called  Saliau  Franks  never  retreats  again. 

^  [St.  Acheulj  mile  south-east  of  Amiens,  on  a  hill  90  feet  above  the 
Somme :  see  below,  p.  184.] 

*  [Compare,  below,  ch.  ii.  §  28  n.  (p.  68).] 

5  [For  the  Tuileries,  compare  Vol.  XX.  p.  808,  and  Vol.  XXVII.  p.  105.] 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


evangelist,  and  the  first  Frank  king's  prayer  to  the  Kin^ 
of  kings  is  made  to  Him,  known  only  as  ''the  God  ol 
Clotilde."'  i 

10.  I  must  task  the  reader's  patience  now  with  a  date 
or  two,  and  stern  facts — two — three — or  more. 

Clodion,  the  leader  of  the  first  Franks  who  reach  irre- 
vocably beyond  the  Rhine,  fights  his  way  through  desultory 
Roman  cohorts  as  far  as  Amiens,  and  takes  it,^  in  445.'^ 

Two  years  afterwards,  at  his  death,  the  scarcely  asserted 
throne  is  seized — perhaps  inevitably — by  the  tutor  of  his 
children,  Merovee,  whose  dynasty  is  founded  on  the  defeat 
of  Attila  at  Chalons. 

He  died  in  457.  His  son  Childeric,  giving  himself  up 
to  the  love  of  women,  and  scorned  by  the  Frank  soldiery, 
is  driven  into  exile,  the  Franks  choosing  rather  to  live 
under  the  law  of  Rome  than  under  a  base  chief  of  their 
own.  He  receives  asylum  at  the  court  of  the  king  of 
Thuringia,  and  abides  there.  His  chief  officer  in  Amiens, 
at  his  departure,  breaks  a  ring  in  two,  and,  giving  him  the 
half  of  it,  tells  him,  when  the  other  half  is  sent,  to  return. 

And,  after  many  days,  the  half  of  the  broken  ring  is 
sent,  and  he  returns,  and  is  accepted  king  by  his  Franks. 

The  Thuringian  queen  follows  him,  (I  cannot  find  if  her 
husband  is  first  dead — still  less,  if  dead,  how  dying,)  and 
offers  herself  to  him  for  his  wife. 

"  I  have  known  thy  usefulness,  and  that  thou  art  very 
strong;  and  I  have  come  to  live  with  thee.  Had  I  known, 
in  parts  beyond  sea,  any  one  more  useful  than  thou,  I 
should  have  sought  to  live  with  himr^ 

See  note  at  end  of  chapter,*  as  also  for  the  allusions  in  §  13  to  the 
battle  of  Soissons. 

1  [See  below,  p.  3-1  and  nJ] 

2  [The  MS.  gives  a  reference  to  Geata  Francoriim ,  quoted  in  [Dusevel's]  Histoire 
d' Amiens,  p.  50"  :      liigressus  Ambianoruni  urbem,  ibidem  et  regni  sedem  statuit."] 

3  [See  Gregory  of  Tours,  Bistorice  Francorum,  Book  ii.  ch.  12:  "Novi  utilitatem 
tuam,  quod  sis  valde  strenuus  :  ideoque  veni  ut  habitem  tecum  :  nam  noveris,  si  in 
trausmarinis  partibus  aliquem  cognovissera  utiliorem  te,  expetissem  utique  cohabi- 
tationem  ejus."] 

*  [Below,  p.  48;  where,  however,  the  story  of  Soissons  is  postponed;  it  is? 
ultimately  given  at  p.  77.] 


m 
b: 
0 
Q 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS  33 


He  took  her  for  his  wife,  and  their  son  is  Clovis. 

11.  A  wonderful  story;  how  far  in  Hteralness  true  is 
f  no  manner  of  moment  to  us ;  the  myth,  and  power  of 
,  do  manifest  the  nature  of  the  French  kingdom,  and  pro- 
hesy  its  future  destiny.  Personal  valour,  personal  beauty, 
)yalty  to  kings,  love  of  women,  disdain  of  unloving  mar- 
age,  note  all  these  things  for  true,  and  that  in  the 
Drruption  of  these  will  be  the  last  death  of  the  Frank,  as 
I  their  force  was  his  first  glory. 

Personal  valour,  worth.  Utilitas,  the  keystone  of  all. 
iirth  nothing,  except  as  gifting  with  valour; — Law  of 
rimogeniture  unknown; — Propriety  of  conduct,  it  appears, 
)r  the  present,  also  nowhere!  (but  we  are  all  pagans  yet, 
imember). 

12.  Let  us  get  our  dates  and  our  geography,  at  any 
ite,  gathered  out  of  the  great  nowhere"  of  confused 
lemory,  and  set  well  together,  thus  far. 

457.  Merovee  dies.  The  useful  Childeric,  counting  his 
xile,  and  reign  in  Amiens,  together,  is  King  altogether 
venty-four  years,  457  to  481,  and  during  his  reign  Odoacer 
ids  the  Roman  empire  in  Italy,  476. 

481.  Clovis  is  only  fifteen  when  he  succeeds  his  father, 
i  King  of  the  Franks  in  Amiens.  At  this  time  a  frag- 
lent  of  Roman  power  remains  isolated  in  central  France, 
hile  four  strong  and  partly  savage  nations  form  a  cross 
)und  this  dying  centre :  the  Frank  on  the  north,  the  Breton 
a  the  west,  the  Burgundian  on  the  east,  the  Visigoth, 
rongest  of  all  and  gentlest,  in  the  south,  from  Loire  to 
|ie  sea. 

Sketch  for  yourself,  first,  a  map  of  France,  as  large  as 
ou  like,  as  in  Plate  VI. ,^  Fig.  1,  marking  only  the  courses 

♦  The  first  four  figures  in  this  illustration  are  explained  in  the  text, 
lie  fifth  represents  the  relations  of  Normandy,  Maine,  Anjou,  and  Aqui- 
ine;  see  Viollet-le-Duc,  Diet  Arch.,  vol.  i.  p.  1S6.^ 

^  [Where  a  map  of  the  divisions  of  France  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  century  is 
ven.    For  another  reference  to  the  maps  on  the  present  plate^  see  Fors  Clavigera^ 
Jtter  95  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  504),  and  compare  Vol.  XXVII.  pp.  Ixx.-lxxiii.] 
xxxiii.  c 


84 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


of  the  five  rivers,  Somme,  Seine,  Loire,  Saone,  Rhone  ;i 
then,  rudely,  you  find  it  was  divided  at  the  time  thus, 
Fig.  2  :  Fleur-de-lysee  part,  Frank  ;        Breton ;  Bur- 

gundian;  Visigoth.    I  am  not  sure  how  far  these  I 

last  reached  across  Rhone  into  Provence,  but  I  think  best ' 
to  indicate  Provence  as  semee  with  roses. 

13.  Now,  under  Clovis,  the  Franks  fight  three  great 
battles.  The  first,  with  the  Romans,  near  Soissons,  which 
they  win,  and  become  masters  of  France  as  far  as  the  j 
Loire.  Copy  the  rough  map  Fig.  2,  and  put  the  fleur-de-  | 
lys  all  over  the  middle  of  it,  extinguishing  the  Romans 
(Fig.  3).  This  battle  was  won  by  Clovis,  I  believe,  before 
he  married  Clotilde.  He  wins  his  princess  by  it:  cannot 
get  his  pretty  vase,  however,  to  present  to  her.^  Keep 
that  story  well  in  your  mind,  and  the  battle  of  Soissons, 
as  winning  mid-France  for  the  French,  and  ending  the 
Romans  there,  for  ever.  Secondly,  after  he  marries  Clotilde, 
the  wild  Germans  attack  hivi  from  the  north,  and  he  hasi 
to  fight  for  life  and  throne  at  Tolbiac.  This  is  the  battle 
in  which  he  prays  to  the  God  of  Clotilde,^  and  quits  him- 
self of  the  Germans  by  His  help.  Whereupon  he  is  crowned 
in  Rheims  by  St.  Remy. 

And  now,  in  the  new  strength  of  his  Christianity,  and 
his  twin  victory  over  Rome  and  Germany,  and  his  love  for 
his  queen,  and  his  ambition  for  his  people,  he  looks  south 
on  that  vast  Visigothic  power,  between  Loire  and  the  snowy 
mountains.  Shall  Christ,  and  the  Franks,  not  be  stronger 
than  villainous  Visigoths  *'who  are  Arians  also"?^  All  his 
Franks  are  with  him,  in  that  opinion.  So  he  marches  against 
the  Visigoths,  meets  them  and  their  Alaric  at  Poitiers,  ends 

^  [See,  however,  below,  p.  77,  where  Ruskiu  corrects  this  statement.] 
2  ["Oh  Jesus  Christ!  whom  Clotilda  declares  to  be  the  son  of  the  living  God, 
who  art  said  to  give  help  to  the  weary,  and  victory  to  them  that  trust  in  thee,  I 
humbly  pray  for  thy  glorious  aid,  and  promise  that  if  thou  wilt  indulge  me  with 
the  victory  over  these  enemies,  I  will  believe  in  thee  and  be  baptized  in  thy  name. 
For  I  have  called  on  my  own  gods,  and  have  found  that  they  are  of  no  power 
and  do  not  help  those  who  call  upon  them  "  (Hodgkin's  Theodoric  the  Goth,  p.  189).] 
*  [See  Gibbon,  ch.  xxxviii.  (vol.  vi.  p.  312).] 


THE      D'/NASTIES     OF  FRANCE 
To  the  close  of  the  Tenth  C  en  ^iirj^ . 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS  85 


:heir  Alaric  and  their  Arianism,  and  carries  his  faithful 
Franks  to  the  Pie  du  Midi. 

14.  And  so  now  you  must  draw  the  map  of  France 
)nce  more  [Fig.  4],  and  put  the  fleur-de-lys  all  over  its 
central  mass  from  Calais  to  the  Pyrenees :  only  Brittany 
dill  on  the  west,  Burgundy  in  the  east,  and  the  white 
Provence  rose  beyond  Rhone.  And  now  poor  little  Amiens 
las  become  a  mere  border  town  like  our  Durham,  and 
Somme  a  border  streamlet  like  our  Tyne.  Loire  and  Seine 
lave  become  the  great  French  rivers,  and  men  will  be 
ninded  to  build  cities  by  these ;  where  the  well- watered 
plains,  not  of  peat,  but  richest  pasture,  may  repose  under 
iie  guard  of  saucy  castles  on  the  crags,  and  moated  towers 
m  the  islands.  But  now  let  us  think  a  little  more  closely 
y\^hat  our  changed  symbols  in  the  map  may  mean — fleur- 
le-lys  for  level  bar.^ 

They  don't  mean,  certainly,  that  all  the  Goths  are  gone, 
md  nobody  but  Franks  in  France?  The  Franks  have  not 
nassacred  Visigothic  man,  woman,  and  child,  from  Loire 
0  Garonne.  Nay,  where  their  own  throne  is  still  set  by 
he  Somme,  the  peat-bred  people  whom  they  found  there, 
ive  there  still,  though  subdued.  Frank,  or  Goth,  or  Roman, 
nay  fluctuate  hither  and  thither,  in  chasing  or  flying  troops : 
)ut,  unchanged  through  all  the  gusts  of  war,  the  rural 
)eople  whose  huts  they  pillage,  whose  farms  they  ravage, 
md  over  whose  arts  they  reign,  must  still  be  diligently, 
ilently,  and  with  no  time  for  lamentation,  ploughing, 
iowing,  cattle-breeding ! 

Else  how  could  Frank  or  Hun,  Visigoth  or  Roman, 
ive  for  a  month,  or  fight  for  a  day? 

15.  Whatever  the  name,  or  the  manners,  of  their  masters, 
he  ground  delvers  must  be  the  same;  and  the  goat-herd 
)f  the  Pyrenees,  and  the  vine-dresser  of  Garonne,  and  the 
nilkmaid  of  Picardy,  give  them  what  lords  you  may,  abide 

^  [In  all  editions  hitherto,  ''five  fleur-de-lys  for  level  bar/  The  word  "five" 
which  must  have  puzzled  readers  who  compared  the  map)  is  a  mistake ;  Ruskin 
truck  out  the  word  in  his  copy  of  the  book.] 


I 

! 


36  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

in  their  land  always,  blossoming  as  the  trees  of  the  field, 
and  enduring  as  the  crags  of  the  desert.  And  these,  the 
warp  and  first  substance  of  the  nation,  are  divided,  not  by 
dynasties,  but  by  climates ;  and  are  strong  here,  and  helpless 
there,  by  privileges  which  no  invading  t5n'ants  can  abolish, 
and  through  faults  which  no  preaching  hermit  can  repress.  | 
Now,  therefore,  please  let  us  leave  our  history  a  minute  or  i 
two,  and  read  the  lessons  of  constant  earth  and  sky. 

16.  In  old  times,  when  one  posted  from  Calais  to  Paris,  i 
there  was  about  half  an  hour's  trot  on  the  level,  from  the ' 
gate  of  Calais  to  the  long  chalk  hill,  which  had  to  be 
climbed  before  arriving  at  the  first  common  post-house  in 
the  village  of  Marquise.  , 

That  chalk  rise,  virtually,  is  the  front  of  France ;  that ! 
last  bit  of  level  north  of  it,  virtually  the  last  of  Flanders; 
south  of  it,  stretches  now  a  district  of  chalk  and  fine 
building  limestone, — (if  you  keep  your  eyes  open,  you  may 
see  a  great  quarry  of  it  on  the  west  of  the  railway,  half- 
way between  Calais  and  Boulogne,  where  once  was  a  blessed 
little  craggy  dingle  opening  into  velvet  lawns;) — this  high,! 
but  never  mountainous,  calcareous  tract,  sweeping  round 
the  chalk  basin  of  Paris  away  to  Caen  on  one  side,  and 
Nancy  on  the  other,  and  south   as   far  as  Bourges,  and 
the  Limousin.    This  limestone  tract,  with  its  keen  fresh 
air,  everywhere  arable  surface,  and  everywhere  quarriable 
banks  above  well-watered  meadow,  is  the  real  country  of 
the  French.    Here  only  are  their  arts  clearly  developed. 
Farther  south  they  are  Gascons,  or  Limousins,  or  Auver- 
gnats,  or  the  like.    Westward,  grim-granitic  Bretons ;  east- 
ward, Alpine-bearish  Burgundians  :  here  only,  on  the  chalk  , 
and  finely-knit  marble,  between,  say,  Amiens  and  Chartresl  ' 
one  way,  and  between  Caen  and  Rheims  on  the  other,  have 
you  real  France, 

17.  Of  which,  before  we  carry  on  the  farther  vital  his- 
tory, I  must  ask  the  reader  to  consider  with  me  a  little, 
how  history,  so  called,  has  been  for  the  most  part  written, 
and  of  what  particulars  it  usually  consists. 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS  37 


Suppose  that  the  tale  of  King  Lear  were  a  true  one; 
md  that  a  modern  historian  were  giving  the  abstract  of  it 
Q  a  school  manual,  purporting  to  contain  all  essential  facts 
n  British  history  valuable  to  British  youth  in  competitive 
examination.  The  story  would  be  related  somewhat  after 
his  manner  : — 

The  reign  of  the  last  king  of  the  seventy-ninth  dynasty 
losed  in  a  series  of  events  with  the  record  of  which  it  is 
)ainful  to  pollute  the  pages  of  history.  The  weak  old  man 
vished  to  divide  his  kingdom  into  dowries  for  his  three 
laughters ;  but  on  proposing  this  arrangement  to  them,  find- 
ag  it  received  by  the  youngest  with  coldness  and  reserve, 
le  drove  her  from  his  court,  and  divided  the  kingdom  be- 
ween  his  two  elder  children. 

i  ''The  youngest  found  refuge  at  the  court  of  France, 
Inhere  ultimately  the  prince  royal  married  her.  But  the 
wo  elder  daughters,  having  obtained  absolute  power,  treated 
heir  father  at  first  with  disrespect,  and  soon  with  contumely, 
lefused  at  last  even  the  comforts  necessary  to  his  declining 
ears,  the  old  king,  in  a  transport  of  rage,  left  the  palace, 
nth,  it  is  said,  only  the  court  fool  for  an  attendant,  and 
v^andered,  frantic  and  half  naked,  during  the  storms  of 
vinter,  in  the  woods  of  Britain. 

"Hearing  of  these  events,  his  youngest  daughter  hastily 
oUected  an  army,  and  invaded  the  territory  of  her  ungrate- 
ul  sisters,  with  the  object  of  restoring  her  father  to  his 
hrone:  but,  being  met  by  a  well-disciplined  force,  under 
he  command  of  her  eldest  sister's  paramour,  Edmund, 
)astard  son  of  the  Earl  of  Gloucester,  was  herself  defeated, 
hrown  into  prison,  and  soon  afterwards  strangled  by  the 
idulterer's  order.  The  old  king  expired  on  receiving  the 
lews  of  her  death;  and  the  participators  in  these  crimes 
joon  after  received  their  reward ;  for  the  two  wicked  queens 
)eing  rivals  for  the  affections  of  the  bastard,  the  one  of 
hem  who  was  regarded  by  him  with  less  favour  poisoned 
he  other,  and  afterwards  killed  herself.  Edmund  afterwards 
net  his  death  at  the  hand  of  his  brother,  the  legitimate  son 


38 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


of  Gloucester,  under  whose  rule,  with  that  of  the  Earl  of 
Kent,  the  kingdom  remained  for  several  succeeding  years." 

18.  Imagine  this  succinctly  graceful  recital  of  what  the 
historian  conceived  to  be  the  facts,  adorned  with  violently 
black  and  white  woodcuts,  representing  the  Minding  of 
Gloucester,  the  phrenzy  of  Lear,  the  strangling  of  Cordelia, 
and  the  suicide  of  Goneril,  and  you  have  a  type  of  popular 
history  in  the  nineteenth  century;  which  is,  you  may  per-i| 
ceive  after  a  little  reflection,  about  as  profitable  reading  for 
young  persons  (so  far  as  regards  the  general  colour  and 
purity  of  their  thoughts)  as  the  Newgate  Calendar  would 
be;  with  this  farther  condition  of  incalculably  greater  evil, 
that,  while  the  calendar  of  prison-crime  would  teach  a 
thoughtful  youth  the  dangers  of  low  life  and  evil  company, 
the  calendar  of  kingly  crime  overthrows  his  respect  for  any 
manner  of  government,  and  his  faith  in  the  ordinances  of 
Providence  itself. 

19.  Books  of  loftier  pretence,  written  by  bankers,  members 
of  Parliament,  or  orthodox  clergymen,  are  of  course  not 
wanting ;  and  show  that  the  progress  of  civilization  consists 
in  the  victory  of  usury  over  ecclesiastical  prejudice,  or  in  the 
establishment  of  the  Parliamentary  privileges  of  the  borough 
of  Puddlecombe,  or  in  the  extinction  of  the  benighted 
superstitions  of  the  Papacy  by  the  glorious  light  of  Refor- 
mation. Finally,  you  have  the  broadly  philosophical  history, 
which  proves  to  you  that  there  is  no  evidence  whatever 
of  any  overruling  Providence  in  human  affairs ;  that  all 
virtuous  actions  have  selfish  motives ;  and  that  a  scientific 
selfishness,  with  proper  telegraphic  communications,  and 
perfect  knowledge  of  all  the  species  of  Bacteria,  will  en- 
tirely secure  the  future  well-being  of  the  upper  classes  of 
society,  and  the  dutiful  resignation  of  those  beneath  them. 

Meantime,  the  two  ignored  powers — the  Providence  of 
Heaven,  and  the  virtue  of  men — have  ruled,  and  rule,  the 
world,  not  invisibly;  and  they  are  the  only  powers  of 
which  history  has  ever  to  tell  any  profitable  truth.  Under 
all  sorrow,  there  is  the  force  of  virtue ;  over  all  ruin,  thdj 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS  39 


•estoring  charity  of  God.  To  these  alone  we  have  to  look ; 
n  these  alone  we  may  understand  the  past,  and  predict 
:he  future,  destiny  of  the  ages. 

20.  I  return  to  the  story  of  Clovis,  king  now  of  all 
central  France.  Fix  the  year  500  in  your  minds  as  the 
ipproximate  date  of  his  baptism  at  Rheims,  and  of  St. 
Remy  s  sermon  to  him,  telling  him  of  the  sufferings  and 
passion  of  Christ,  till  Clovis  sprang  from  his  throne,  grasping 
lis  spear,  and  crying,  "  Had  I  been  there  with  my  brave 
Franks,  I  would  have  avenged  His  wrongs."^ 

"There  is  little  doubt,"  proceeds  the  cockney  historian, 
'that  the  conversion  of  Clovis  was  as  much  a  matter  of 
policy  as  of  faith."  ^  But  the  cockney  historian  had  better 
imit  his  remarks  on  the  characters  and  faiths  of  men  to 
:hose  of  the  curates  who  have  recently  taken  orders  in  his 
kshionable  neighbourhood,  or  the  bishops  who  have  lately 
preached  to  the  population  of  its  manufacturing  suburbs. 
Frankish  kings  were  made  of  other  clay. 

21.  The  Christianity  of  Clovis  does  not  indeed  produce 
my  fruits  of  the  kind  usually  looked  for  in  a  modern 
3onvert.  We  do  not  hear  of  his  repenting  ever  so  httle  of 
my  of  his  sins,  nor  resolving  to  lead  a  new  life^  in  any  the 
smallest  particular.  He  had  not  been  impressed  with  con- 
victions of  sin  at  the  battle  of  Tolbiac;  nor,  in  asking  for 
:he  help  of  the  God  of  Clotilde,  had  he  felt  or  professed 
:he  remotest  intention  of  changing  his  character,  or  aban- 
doning his  projects.  What  he  was,  before  he  believed  in 
his  queen  s  God,  he  only  more  intensely  afterwards  became, 
in  the  confidence  of  that  before  unknown  God's  super- 
natural help.  His  natural  gratitude  to  the  Delivering 
Power,  and  pride  in  its  protection,  added  only  fierceness 
to  his  soldiership,  and  deepened  his  political  enmities  with 
jthe  rancour  of  religious  indignation.  No  more  dangerous 
snare  is  set  by  the  fiends  for  human  frailty  than  the  belief 

^  [See  Gibbon,  ch.  xxxviii. :  vol.  vi.  pp.  801-302.] 

2  [The  Pictorial  History  of  France,  by  G.  M.  Bussey  and  T.  Garpey,  2  vols., 
1843,  ch.  ii.  (vol.  i.  p.  68).] 

^  [See  the  Exhortation  preceding  the  Communion  Service.] 


40 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


that  our  own  enemies  are  also  the  enemies  of  God ;  and  it 
is  perfectly  conceivable  to  me  that  the  conduct  of  Clovis. 
might  have  been  tlie  more  unscrupulous,  precisely  in  thel 
measure  that  his  faith  was  more  sincere. 

Had  either  Clovis  or  Clotilde  fully  understood  the  pre- 
cepts of  their  Master,  the  following  history  of  France,  and 
of  Europe,  would  have  been  other  than  it  is.  What  they 
could  understand,  or  in  any  wise  were  taught,  you  will 
find  that  they  obeyed,  and  were  blessed  in  obeying.  But 
their  history  is  complicated  with  that  of  several  other 
persons,  respecting  whom  we  must  note  now  a  few  too 
much  forgotten  particulars. 

22.  If  from  beneath  the  apse  of  Amiens  Cathedral  we 
take  the  street  leading  due  south,  leaving  the  railroad 
station  on  the  left,  it  brings  us  to  the  foot  of  a  gradually 
ascending  hill,  some  half  a  mile  long — a  pleasant  and  quiet 
walk  enough,  terminating  on  the  level  of  the  highest  land 
near  Amiens ;  whence,  looking  back,  the  Cathedral  is  seen 
beneath  us,  all  but  the  fleche,  our  gained  hill-top  being  on 
a  level  with  its  roof-ridge :  and,  to  the  south,  the  plain  of 
France. 

Somewhere  about  this  spot,  or  in  the  line  between 
it  and  St.  Acheul,  stood  the  ancient  Roman  gate  of  the 
Twins,  whereon  were  Romulus  and  Remus  being  suckled 
by  the  wolf;  and  out  of  which,  one  bitter  winters  day — a 
hundred  and  seventy  years  ago  when  Clovis  was  baptized 
— had  ridden  a  Roman  soldier,  wrapped  in  his  horseman's 
cloak,  on  the  causeway  which  was  part  of  the  great 
Roman  road  from  Lyons  to  Boulogne. 

23.  And  it  is  well  worth  your  while  also,  some  frosty 
autumn  or  winter  day  when  the  east  wind  is  high,  to  feel 
the  sweep  of  it  at  this  spot,  remembering  what  chanced]  j 
here,  memorable  to  all  men,  and  serviceable,  in  that  winter  ' 
of  the  year  332,  when  men  were  dying  for  cold  in  Amiens 

*  More  properly,  his  knight's  cloak;  in  all  likelihood  the  trabea,  with 
purple  and  white  stripes,  dedicate  to  the  kings  of  Rome,  and  chiefly  to 
Romulus. 


j  I 


1.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS 


41 


streets : — namely,  that  the  Roman  horseman,  scarce  gone 
out  of  the  city  gate,  was  met  by  a  naked  beggar,  shiver- 
ing with  cold;  and  that,  seeing  no  other  way  of  shelter 
for  him,  he  drew  his  sword,  divided  his  own  cloak  in  two, 
aiid  gave  him  half  of  it.^ 

No  ruinous  gift,  nor  even  enthusiastically  generous: 
Sidney's  cup  of  cold  water  ^  needed  more  self-denial,  and  I 
am  well  assured  that  many  a  Christian  child  of  our  day, 
himself  well  warmed  and  clad,  meeting  one  naked  and  cold, 
would  be  ready  enough  to  gi^^e  the  whole  cloak  off  his 
own  shoulders  to  the  necessitous  one,  if  his  better-advised 
nurse,  or  mamma,  would  let  him.  But  this  Roman  soldier 
was  no  Christian,  and  did  his  serene  charity  in  simplicity, 
yet  with  prudence. 

Nevertheless,  that  same  night,  he  beheld  in  a  dream 
the  Lord  Jesus,  who  stood  before  him  in  the  midst  of 
angels,  having  on  His  shoulders  the  half  of  the  cloak  he 
had  bestowed  on  the  beggar. 

And  Jesus  said  to  the  angels  that  were  around  Him, 
Know  ye  who  hath  thus  arrayed  me  ?  My  servant  Martin, 
though  yet  unbaptized,  has  done  this."  And  Martin  after 
this  vision  hastened  to  receive  baptism,  being  then  in  his 
twenty-third  year.^ 

Whether  these  things  ever  were  so,  or  how  far  so, 
credulous  or  incredulous  reader,  is  no  business  whatever  of 
yours  or  mine.  What  is,  and  shall  be  everlastingly,  so, — 
namely,  the  infallible  truth  of  the  lesson  herein  taught, 
and  the  actual  effect  of  the  life  of  St.  Martin  on  the  mind 
of  Christendom, — is,  very  absolutely,  the  business  of  every 
rational  being  in  any  Christian  realm. 

24.  You  are  to  understand,  then,  first  of  all,  that  the 
especial  character  of  St.  Martin  is  a  serene  and  meek 
charity  to  all  creatures.  He  is  not  a  preaching  saint — still 
less  a  persecuting  one:  not  even  an  anxious  one.    Of  his 

*  Mrs.  Jameson,  Sacred  and  Legendary  Art,  vol.  ii.  p.  351  (ed.  1,  1848). 

1  [Compare  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  61  (Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  485).] 
»  [See  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  36  (VoL  XXVII.  p.  671).] 


42 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


prayers  we  hear  little — of  his  wishes,  nothing.  What  hej 
does  always,  is  merely  the  right  thing  at  the  right  moment ;  i 
— rightness  and  kindness  being  in  his  mind  one:  an  ex-' 
tremely  exemplary  saint,  to  my  notion. 

Converted  and  baptized — and  conscious  of  having  seenj 
Christ — he  nevertheless  gives  his  officers  no  trouble  what- 
ever— does  not  try  to  make  proselytes  in  his  cohort.  It 
is  Christ's  business,  surely! — if  He  wants  them.  He  may 
appear  to  them  as  He  has  to  me,"  seems  the  feeling  of  hisj 
first  baptized  days.  He  remains  seventeen  years  in  the 
army,  on  those  tranquil  terms.  1 

At  the  end  of  that  time,  thinking  it  might  be  well 
to  take  other  service,  he  asks  for  his  dismissal  from  the 
Emperor  Julian, — on  whose  accusation  of  faint-heartedness, 
Martin  offers,  unarmed,  to  lead  his  cohort  into  battle, 
bearing  only  the  sign  of  the  cross.  Julian  takes  him  at 
his  word, — keeps  him  in  ward  till  time  of  battle  comes; 
but,  the  day  before  he  counts  on  putting  him  to  that  war 
ordeal,  the  barbarian  enemy  sends  embassy  with  irrefusable 
offers  of  submission  and  peace. 

25.  The  story  is  not  often  dwelt  upon :  how  far  literally 
true,  again  observe,  does  not  in  the  least  matter  ; — here  is 
the  lesson  for  ever  given  of  the  way  in  which  a  Christian 
soldier  should  meet  his  enemies.  Which,  had  John  Bunyan's 
Mr.  Greatheart  understood,^  the  Celestial  gates  had  opened 
by  this  time  to  many  a  pilgrim  who  has  failed  to  hew  his 
path  up  to  them  with  the  sword  of  sharpness. 

But  true  in  some  practical  and  effectual  way  the  story 
is  ;  for  after  a  while,  without  any  oratorizing,  anathematizing, 
or  any  manner  of  disturbance,  we  find  the  Roman  Knight 
made  Bishop  of  Tours,  and  becoming  an  influence  of  un- 
mixed good  to  all  mankind,  then,  and  afterwards.  And 
virtually  the  same  story  is  repeated  of  his  bishop's  robe 
as  of  his  knight's  cloak,  —  not  to  be  rejected  because  so 
probable  an  invention  ;  for  it  is  just  as  probable  an  act. 

*  [For  Ruskin's  numerous  references  to  The  Pilgrim^s  Progress^  see  the  General 
Index ;  compare,  below,  p.  428.] 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS 


43 


26.  Going,  in  his  full  robes,  to  say  prayers  in  church, 
vith  one  of  his  deacons,  he  came  across  some  unhappily 
obeless  person  by  the  wayside;  for  whom  he  forth- 
vith  orders  his  deacon  to  provide  some  manner  of  coat, 
>r  gown. 

The  deacon  objecting  that  no  apparel  of  that  profane 
lature  is  under  his  hand,  St.  Martin,  with  his  customary 
erenity,  takes  off  his  own  episcopal  stole,  or  whatsoever 
lowing  stateliness  it  might  be,  throws  it  on  the  desti- 
ute  shoulders,  and  passes  on  to  perform  indecorous  public 
ervice  in  his  waistcoat,  or  such  mediaeval  nether  attire  as 
emained  to  him. 

But,  as  he  stood  at  the  altar,  a  globe  of  light  ap- 
)eared  above  his  head ;  and  when  he  raised  his  bare  arms 
nth  the  Host — the  angels  were  seen  round  him,  hang- 
ng  golden  chains  upon  them,  and  jewels,  not  of  the 
•arth.' 

27.  Incredible  to  you,  in  the  nature  of  things,  wise 
eader,  and  too  palpably  a  gloss  of  monkish  folly  on  the 
)lder  story  ? 

Be  it  so  :  yet  in  this  fable  of  monkish  folly,  understood 
vith  the  heart,  would  have  been  the  chastisement  and 
^heck  of  every  form  of  the  Church's  pride  and  sensuality, 
vhich  in  our  day  have  literally  sunk  the  service  of  God 
md  His  poor  into  the  service  of  the  clergyman  and  his 
ich ;  and  changed  what  was  once  the  garment  of  praise  for 
^he  spirit  of  heaviness,  into  the  spangling  of  Pantaloons  in 
in  ecclesiastical  Masquerade. 

28.  But  one  more  legend, — and  we  have  enough  to  show 
us  the  roots  of  this  saint's  strange  and  universal  power 
3ver  Christendom : — 

"What  peculiarly  distinguished  St.  Martin  was  his  sweet,  serious,  unfail- 
ng  serenity ;  no  one  had  ever  seen  him  angry,  or  sad,  or  gay ;  there  was 
lothing  in  his  heart  but  piety  to  God  and  pity  for  men.  The  Devil,  who 
ivas  particularly  envious  of  his  virtues,  detested  above  all  his  exceeding 


^  [For  a  reference  to  this  miracle,  see  ^'^The  Story  of  Lucia"  in  Roadside  Songs 
rf  Tuscany  (Vol.  XXXII.  p.  61).] 


44  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

charity,  because  it  was  the  most  inimical  to  his  own  power,  and  one  day 
reproached  him  mockingly  that  he  so  soon  received  into  favour  the  fallen  j 
and  the  repentant.  But  St.  Martin  answered  him  sorrowfully,  saying,  'Ohii 
most  miserable  that  thou  art!  if  ihou  also  couldst  cease  to  persecute  and] 
seduce  wretched  men,  if  thou  also  couldst  repent,  thou  also  shouldst  find] 
mercy  and  forgiveness  through  Jesus  Christ.'  "  * 

29.  In  this  gentleness  was  his  strength ;  and  the  issue 
of  it  is  best  to  be  estimated  by  comparing  its  scope  with 
that  of  the  work  of  St.  Firmin.  The  impatient  missionary 
riots  and  rants  about  Amiens'  streets — insults,  exhorts, 
persuades,  baptizes, — turns  everything,  as  aforesaid,^  upside  j 
down  for  forty  days :  then  gets  his  head  cut  off,  and  is 
never  more  named,  out  of  Amiens.  St.  Martin  teazes 
nobody,  spends  not  a  breath  in  unpleasant  exhortation, 
understands,  by  Christ's  first  lesson  to  himself,  that  undipped 
people  may  be  as  good  as  dipped  if  their  hearts  are  clean ; 
helps,  forgives,  and  cheers,  (companionable  even  to  the 
loving-cup,)  as  readily  the  clown  as  the  king ;  he  is  the 
patron  of  honest  drinking;  the  stuffing  of  your  Martin- 1| 
mas  goose  is  fragrant  in  his  nostrils,  and  sacred  to  him.  the 
last  kindly  rays  of  departing  summer.^  And  somehow — the 
idols  totter  before  him  far  and  near — the  Pagan  gods  fade, 
his  Christ  becomes  all  men's  Christ — his  name  is  named 
over  new  shrines  innumerable  in  all  lands  ;  high  on  the 
Roman  hills,  lowly  in  English  fields  ; — St.  Augustine  bap- 
tized his  first  English  converts  in  St.  Martin's  church  at 
Canterbury ;  and  the  Charing  Cross  station  itself  has  not 
yet  effaced  wholly  from  London  minds  his  memory  or  his 
name. 

30.  That  story  of  the  Episcopal  Robe  is  the  last  of 
St.  Martin  respecting  which  I  venture  to  tell  you  that  iti| 
is  wiser  to  suppose  it  literally  true  than  a  mere  myth; 


*  Mrs.  Jameson,  vol.  ii.  p.  352. 


"See  above,  §  7.] 

For  another  reference  to  the  "vein  of  gaiety  and  natural  humour"  ii 
St.  Martin,  see  A  Knight's  Faith  (Vol.  XXXI.  p.  886  n.).] 


1.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS 


45 


nyth,  however,  of  the  deepest  value  and  beauty  it  remains 
issuredly :  and  this  really  last  story  I  have  to  tell,  which 
(  admit  you  will  be  wiser  in  thinking  a  fable  than  exactly 
!;rue,  nevertheless  had  assuredly  at  its  root  some  grain  of 
"act  (sprouting  a  hundred-fold^)  cast  on  good  ground  by 
I  visible  and  unforgetable  piece  of  St.  Martin's  actual 
3ehaviour  in  high  company;  while,  as  a  myth,  it  is  every 
whit  and  for  ever  valuable  and  comprehensive. 

St.  Martin,  then,  as  the  tale  will  have  it,  was  dining 
me  day  at  the  highest  of  tables  in  the  terrestrial  globe — 
aamely,  with  the  Emperor  and  Empress  of  Germany! 
You  need  not  inquire  what  Emperor,  or  which  of  the 
Emperor's  wives !  The  Emperor  of  Germany  is,  in  all  early 
myths,  the  expression  for  the  highest  sacred  power  of  the 
State,  as  the  Pope  is  the  highest  sacred  power  of  the 
Church.  St.  Martin  was  dining  then,  as  aforesaid,  with  the 
Emperor,  of  course  sitting  next  him  on  his  left — Empress 
opposite  on  his  right:  everything  orthodox.  St.  Martin 
much  enjoying  his  dinner,  and  making  himself  generally 
agreeable  to  the  company :  not  in  the  least  a  John  Baptist 
sort  of  a  saint.  You  are  aware  also  that  in  Royal  feasts 
in  those  days  persons  of  much  inferior  rank  in  society  were 
allowed  in  the  hall:  got  behind  people's  chairs,  and  saw 
and  heard  what  was  going  on,  while  they  unobtrusively 
picked  up  crumbs,  and  licked  trenchers. 

When  the  dinner  was  a  little  forward,  and  time  for 
wine  came,  the  Emperor  fills  his  own  cup — fills  the 
Empress's — fills  St.  Martin's, — affectionately  hobnobs  with 
St.  Martin.  The  equally  loving,  and  yet  more  truly  believ- 
ing, Empress,  looks  across  the  table,  humbly,  but  also 
royally,  expecting  St.  Martin,  of  course,  next  to  hobnob 
with  her.  St.  Martin  looks  round,  first,  deliberately; — 
becomes  aware  of  a  tatterdemalion  and  thirsty-looking  soul 
of  a  beggar  at  his  chair  side,  who  has  managed  to  get  his 
cup  filled  somehow,  also^ — by  a  charitable  lacquey. 


1  [Matthew  xiii.  8.] 


46 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


St.  Martin  turns  his  back  on  the  Empress,  and  hobnobs  1 
with  liimf^ 

31.  For  which  charity — mythic  if  you  like,  but  ever-S 
more  exemplary — he  remains,  as  aforesaid,  the  patron  of 
good-Christian  topers  to  this  hour. 

As  gathering  years  told  upon  him,  he  seems  to  have  felt 
that  he  had  carried  weight  of  crozier  long  enough — that 
busy  Tours  must  now  find  a  busier  Bishop — that,  for  him* 
self,  he  might  innocently  henceforward  take  his  pleasure 
and  his  rest  where  the  vine  grew  and  the  lark  sang.  Forij 
his  episcopal  palace,  he  takes  a  little  cave  in  the  chalk  1 
cHffs  of  the  up-country  river :  arranges  all  matters  therein,  i 
for  bed  and  board,  at  small  cost.    Night  by  night  the 
stream  murmurs  to  him,  day  by  day  the  vine-leaves  give 
their  shade;  and,  daily  by  the  horizon's  breadth  so  much 
nearer  Heaven,  the  fore-running  sun  goes  down  for  him 
beyond  the  glowing  water; — there,  where  now  the  peasant 
woman  trots  homewards  between  her  panniers,  and  the  saw 
rests  in  the  half-cleft  wood,  and  the  village  spire  rises  grey 
against  the  farthest  light,  in  Turner's  "  Loireside." 

32.  All  which  things,  though  not  themselves  without 
profit,  my  special  reason  for  telling  you  now,  has  been  that 
you  might  understand  the  significance  of  what  chanced  first 
on  Clovis'  march  south  against  the  Visigoths. 

Having  passed  the  Loire  at  Tours,  he  traversed  the  lands 
of  the  abbey  of  St.  Martin,  which  he  declared  inviolate, 
and  refused  permission  to  his  soldiers  to  touch  anything, 
save  water  and  grass  for  their  horses.  So  rigid  were  his 
orders,  and  the  obedience  he  exacted  in  this  respect,  that 

*  Modern  Painters,  Plate  73.    [Vol.  VII.  p.  218.] 

^  ["^Oii  some  occasion  the  emperor  invited  him  to  a  banquet,  and,  wishing  to 
show  the  saint  particular  honour,  he  handed  the  wine-cup  to  him  before  he  drank, 
expecting,  according  to  the  usual  custom^  that  St.  Martin  would  touch  it  with  his 
lips,  and  then  present  it  respectfully  to  his  imperial  host ;  but,  equally  to  the 
astonishment  and  admiration  of  the  guests^  St.  Martin  turned  round  and  presented 
the  brimming  goblet  to  a  poor  priest  who  stood  behind  him.  From  this  incident, 
St.  Martin  has  been  chosen  as  the  patron  saint  of  drinking,  and  of  all  jovial 
meetings"  (Mrs.  Jameson,  vol.  ii.  p.  853).] 


I.  BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS  47 


I  Prankish  soldier  having  taken,  without  the  consent  of 
he  owner,  some  hay  which  belonged  to  a  poor  man,  saying 
n  raillery  "that  it  was  but  grass,"  he  caused  the  aggressor 
o  be  put  to  death,  exclaiming  that  "Victory  could  not  be 
;xpected,  if  St.  Martin  should  be  offended." 

33.  Now,  mark  you  well,  this  passage  of  the  Loire  at 
Cours  is  virtually  the  fulfilment  of  the  proper  bounds  of  the 
^rench  kingdom,  and  the  sign  of  its  approved  and  securely 
et  power  is  "Honour  to  the  poor!"  Even  a  little  grass 
s  not  to  be  stolen  from  a  poor  man,  on  pain  of  Death.  So 
vills  the  Christian  knight  of  Roman  armies ;  throned  now 
ligh  with  God.  So  wills  the  first  Christian  king  of  far 
dctorious  Franks ; — here  baptized  to  God  in  Jordan  of  his 
roodly  land,  as  he  goes  over  to  possess  it. 

How  long? 

Until  that  same  Sign  should  be  read  backwards  from  a 
iegenerate  throne ; — until,  message  being  brought  that  the 
poor  of  the  French  people  had  no  bread  to  eat,  answer 
should  be  returned  to  them  "  They  may  eat  grass."  ^  Where- 
ipon — by  St.  Martin's  faubourg,  and  St.  Martin's  gate — 
here  go  forth  commands  from  the  Poor  Man's  Knight 
igainst  the  King — which  end  his  feasting, 
j  And  be  this  much  remembered  by  you,  of  the  power 
)ver  French  souls,  past  and  to  come,  of  St.  Martin  of 
Tours. 

^  [The  saying  attributed  to  Foulon  (1788) :  see  Carlyle's  French  Revolution, 
Book  iii.  ch.  ix.  and  Book  v.  ch.  iv.] 


NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  I 


34.  The  reader  will  please  observe  that  notes  immediately  necessary  to  the 
understanding  of  the  text  will  be  given,  with  numbered  references,  under 
the  text  itself;  while  questions  of  disputing  authorities,  or  quotations  of 
supporting  documents,  will  have  lettered  references,  and  be  thrown  together 
at  the  end  of  each  chapter.  One  good  of  this  method  *  will  be  that,  after 
the  numbered  notes  are  all  right,  if  I  see  need  of  farther  explanation,  as 
I  revise  the  press,  I  can  insert  a  letter  referring  to  a  Jinal  note  without 
confusion  of  the  standing  types.  There  will  be  some  use  also  in  the  final 
notes,  in  summing  the  chapters,  or  saying  what  is  to  be  more  carefully 
remembered  of  them.  Thus  just  now  it  is  of  no  consequence  to  remember 
that  the  first  taking  of  Amiens  was  in  445,  because  that  is  not  the  found- 
ing of  the  Merovingian  dynasty ;  neither  that  Merovaeus  seized  the  throne 
in  447  and  died  ten  years  later.  The  real  date  to  be  remembered  is  481, 
v;hen  Clovis  himself  comes  to  the  throne,  a  boy  of  fifteen;  and  the  three 
battles  of  Clovis'  reign  to  be  remembered  are  Soissons,  Tolbiac,  and  Poitiers 
— remembering  also  that  this  was  the  first  of  the  three  great  battles  of 
Poitiers; — how  the  Poitiers  district  came  to  have  such  importance  as  a 
battle-position,  we  must  afterwards  discover  if  we  can.^  Of  Queen  Clotilda 
and  her  flight  from  Burgundy  to  her  Frank  lover  we  must  hear  more  in 
next  chapter, — the  story  of  the  vase  at  Soissons  is  given  in  The  Pictorial 
History  of  Francey  but  must  be  deferred  also,  with  such  comment  as  it 
needs,  to  next  chapter ;  ^  for  I  wish  the  reader's  mind,  in  the  close  of  this 
first  number,  to  be  left  fixed  on  two  descriptions  of  the  modern  Frank" 
(taking  that  word  in  its  Saracen  sense  as  distinguished  from  the  modern 
Saracen.  The  first  description  is  by  Colonel  Butler,  entirely  true  and 
admirable,  except  in  the  implied  extension  of  the  contrast  to  olden  time: 
for  the  Saxon  soul  under  Alfred,  the  Teutonic  under  Charlemagne,  and 
the  Frank  under  St.  Louis,  were  quite  as  religious  as  any  Asiatic's,  though 
more  practical ;  it  is  only  the  modern  mob  of  kingless  miscreants  in  the 
West,  who  have  sunk  themselves  by  gambling,  swindling,  machine-making, 
and  gluttony,  into  the  scurviest  louts  ^  that  have  ever  fouled  the  Earth 
with  the  carcases  she  lent  them. 

*  This  method  is  not,  however,  followed  in  the  succeeding  chapters. — 
Ed.  (1897). 

^  [To  this  subject,  however,  Ruskin  did  not  revert,  except  incidentally  in  ch.  ii. 
§  53  (p.  84).] 

2  See  below,  p.  77-] 

3  [That  is,  in  the  sense  in  which  Turks  and  other  Levantine  nations  use  the 
word  to  describe  all  western  peoples:  '*all  European  nations  that  live  among  them 
are  called  Franks "  (North's  Lives j  1734,  vol.  ii.  p.  456).  Compare  Gibbon's 
"Saraceus  and  Franks,"  as  quoted  below,  p.  95  n.] 

*  [Ruskin  defends  and  explains  these  words  in  Love's  Meinie,  §  183  (Vol.  XXV. 
p.  126).] 

48 


NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  I 


4^ 


35.  "Of  the  features  of  English  character  brought  to  light  by  the 
(read  of  British  dominion  in  Asia,  there  is  nothing  more  observable  than 
le  contrast  between  the  religious  bias  of  Eastern  thought  and  the  innate 
jsence  of  religion  in  tlie  Anglo-Saxon  mind.  Turk  and  Greek,  Buddhist 
id  Armenian,  Copt  and  Parsee,  all  manifest  in  a  hundred  ways  of  daily 
fe  the  great  fact  of  their  belief  in  a  God.  In  their  vices  as  well  as  in 
leir  virtues  the  recognition  of  Deity  is  dominant. 

With  the  Western,  on  the  contrary,  the  outward  form  of  practising 
jlief  in  a  God  is  a  thing  to  be  half-ashamed  of — something  to  hide.  A 
•ocession  of  priests  in  the  Strada  Reale  would  probably  cause  an  average 
riton  to  regard  it  with  less  tolerant  eye  than  he  Avould  cast  upon  a 
iggernaut  festival  in  Orissa :  but  to  each  alike  would  he  display  the  same 
onoclasm  of  creed,  the  same  idea,  not  the  less  fixed  because  it  is  seldom 
cpressed  in  words :  '  You  pray ;  therefore  I  do  not  think  much  of  you.* 
ut  there  is  a  deeper  difference  between  East  and  West  lying  beneath  this 
compatibility  of  temper  on  the  part  of  modern  Englishmen  to  accept  the 
ligious  habit  of  thought  in  the  East.  All  Eastern  peoples  possess  this 
ibit  of  thought.  It  is  the  one  tie  which  links  together  their  widely 
'ffering  races.  Let  us  give  an  illustration  of  our  meaning.  On  an  Austrian 
loyd's  steamboat  in  the  Levant  a  traveller  from  Beyrout  will  frequently 
*e  strange  groups  of  men  crowded  together  on  tlie  quarter-deck.  In  the 
orning  the  missal  books  of  the  Greek  Church  will  be  laid  along  the  bul- 
arks  of  the  ship,  and  a  couple  of  Russian  priests,  coming  from  Jerusalem, 
ill  be  busy  muttering  mass.  A  yard  to  right  or  left  a  Turkish  pilgrim, 
iturning  from  Mecca,  sits  a  respectful  observer  of  the  scene.  It  is  prayer, 
id  therefore  it  is  holy  in  his  sight.  So,  too,  when  the  evening  hour  has 
)me,  and  the  Turk  spreads  out  his  bit  of  carpet  for  the  sunset  prayers 
id  obeisance  towards  Mecca,  the  Greek  looks  on  in  silence,  without  trace 
c'  scorn  in  his  face,  for  it  is  again  the  worship  of  the  Creator  by  the 

eated.  They  are  both  fulfilling  the  ^/irst  law  of  the  East — prayer  to  God ; 
ad  whether  the  shrine  be  Jerusalem,  Mecca,  or  Lhassa,  the  sanctity  of 
orship  surrounds  the  votary,  and  protects  the  pilgrim. 

"  Into  this  life  comes  the  Englishman,  frequently  destitute  of  one  touch 
-  sympathy  with  the  prayers  of  any  people,  or  the  faith  of  any  creed ; 
ence  our  rule  in  the  East  has  ever  rested,  and  will  ever  rest,  upon  the 
ayonet.  We  have  never  yet  got  beyond  the  stage  of  conquest ;  never 
^similated  a  people  to  our  ways,  never  even  civilized  a  single  tribe 
round  the  wide  dominion  of  our  empire.  It  is  curious  how  frequently  a 
''ell-meaning  Briton  will  speak  of  a  foreign  church  or  temple  as  though  it 
ad  presented  itself  to  his  mind  in  the  same  light  in  which  the  City  of 
iOndon  appeared  to  Blucher — as  something  to  loot.    The  other  idea,  that 

priest  M^as  a  person  to  hang,  is  one  which  is  also  often  observable  in  the 
Iritish  brain.  On  one  occasion,  when  we  were  endeavouring  to  enlighten 
ur  minds  on  the  Greek  question,  as  it  had  presented  itself  to  a  naval 
fficer  whose  vessel  had  been  stationed  in  Greek  and  Adriatic  waters  during 
ur  occupation  of  Corfu  and  the  other  Ionian  Isles,  we  could  only  elicit 
*om  our  informant  the  fact  that  one  morning  before  breakfast  he  had 
anged  seventeen  priests."  ^ 

36.  The  second  passage  which  I  store  in  these  notes  for  future  use,  is 


*  ["A  Trip  to  Cyprus,"  in  Far  Out:  Rovings  Retold,  1880,  pp.  361-363.] 

XXXIII.  D 


50 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


the  supremely  magnificent  one,  out  of  a  book  full  of  magnificence, — if 
truth  be  counted  as  having  in  it  the  strength  of  deed:  Alphonse  Karr's 
Grains  de  Bon  Sens.  I  cannot  praise  either  this  or  his  more  recent  Bour- 
donnements  to  my  own  heart's  content,  simply  because  they  are  by  a  man 
utterly  after  my  own  heart,  who  has  been  saying  in  France,  this  many  a 
year,  what  I  also,  this  many  a  year,  have  been  saying  in  England,  neither 
of  us  knowing  of  the  other,  and  both  of  us  vainly.  (See  pages  11  and  12 
of  Bourdonnements})  The  passage  here  given  is  the  sixty-third  clause  in 
Grains  de  Bon  Sens : — 

'^Et  tout  cela,  monsieur,  vient  de  ce  qu'il  n'y  a  plus  de  croyances — 
de  ce  qu'on  ne  croit  plus  a  rien. 

"Ah!  saperlipopette,  monsieur,  vous  me  la  baillez  belle!    Vous  ditesi 
qu'on  ne  croit  plus  a  rien !    Mais  jamais,  a  aucune  epoque,  on  n'a  cru  a 
tant  de  billevesees,  de  bourdes,  de   mensonges,  de  sottises,  d'absurdites  i 
qu'aujourd'hui.  j 

"D'abord,  on  croit  a  I'incredulite — I'incredulite  est  une  croyance,  une 
religion  tres  exigeante,  qui  a  ses  dogmes,  sa  liturge,  ses  pratiques,  ses 
rites !  .  .  .  son  intolerance,  ses  superstitions.  Nous  avons  des  incredules  et 
«des  impies  Jesuites,  et  des  incredules  et  des  impies  jansenistes ;  des  impies 
molinistes,  et  des  impies  quietistes;  des  impies  pratiquants,  et  non  prati- 
quants ;  des  impies  indifferents  et  des  impies  fanatiques ;  des  incredules 
cagots  et  des  impies  hypocrites  et  tartuffes. — La  religion  de  I'incredulite 
ne  se  refuse  meme  pas  le  luxe  des  heresies. 

"On  ne  croit  plus  a  la  bible,  je  le  veux  bien,  mais  on  croit  aux 
'  ecritures '  des  journaux,  on  croit  au  '  sacerdoce '  des  gazettes  et  carres  de 
papier,  et  a  leurs  'oracles'  quotidiens.  I 

"On  croit  au  'bapteme'  de  la  police  correctionnelle  et  de  la  Cour^ 
d'assises — on  appelle  'martyrs'  et  ' confesseurs '  les  'absents'  k  Noumea  et 
les  '  freres '  de  Suisse,  d' Angleterre  et  de  Belgique — et,  quand  on  parle  des 
'martyrs  de  la  Commune,'   9a  ne  s'entend  pas  des   assassines,  mais  des 
assassins. 

"  On  se  fait  enterrer  '  civilement,'  on  ne  veut  plus  sur  son  cercueil  des 
prieres  de  I'Eglise,  on  ne  veut  ni  cierges,  ni  chants  religieux, — mais  on 
veut  un  cortege  portant  derriere  la  biere  des  immortelles  rouges ; — on  veut 
une  'oraison,'  une  'predication'  de  Victor  Hugo  qui  a  ajoute  cette  specialit<5| 

^  [The  following  is  the  passage  referred  to  : — 

"C^est  ce  chagrin,  c'est  cette  irritation  que  j'eprouve  lorsque  vivant  dans  la 
retraite,  etudiant,  meditant,  cherchaiit  sans  cesse, — demandant  a  la  sagesse  des 
anciens,  assidument  feuilletes — 

'"Nocturna  versate  manu,  versate  diurna' 

"  Et  a  ma  propre  experience,  quelque  remede  pour  la  maladie  regnante,  j'ai  la 
conviction  que  j'ai  trouve  ce  remede. 

"  Lorsque  ayant  visite  la  maison  par  le  dedans  et  par  le  dehors,  muni  de  cette 
lampe  qui  s'allume,  helas !  bien  tard,  la  sagesse  de  I'experieuce, — je  dis  avec  certi- 
tude :  ca  c'est  une  fenetre  par  laquelle  vous  tomberez  broye  sur  le  pave, — ici  est  un 
escalier,  puis  une  porte  par  laquelle  vous  sortirez  sans  danger  de  la  vieille  maison. 

"  Et  lorsque  je  le  dis  en  vain." 

It  may  be  added  that  Ruskin  purchased  some  twenty  copies  of  both  the  books 
above  mentioned,  and  had  them  strongly  bound  as  gifts  for  his  friends.] 


NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  I 


51 


;  ses  autres  specialites,  si  bien  qu'un  de  ces  jours  derniers,  comme  il  sui- 
it  un  convoi  en  amateur,  un  croque-mort  s'approcha  de  lui,  le  poussa  du 
1  ude,  et  lui  dit  en  souriant :  ^  Est-ce  que  nous  n'aurons  pas  quelque  chose 
i'  vous,  aujourd'hui  ? ' — Et  cette  predication  11  la  lit  ou  la  recite — ou,  s'il 

juge  pas  a  propos  'd'officier'  lui-meme,  s'il  s'agit  d'un  mort  de  plus,  11 
vole  pour  la  psalmodier  M.  Meurice  ou  tout  autre  'pretre'  ou  'enfant 

coeur'  du  '  Dieu.' — A  defaut  de  M.  Hugo,  s'il  s'agit  d'un  citoyen  obscur, 
(  se  contente  d'une  homelie  improvisee  pour  la  dixieme  fois  par  n'lmporte 
^  el  depute  intransigeant — et  le  Miserere  est  remplace  par  les  cris  de  'Vive 
[  Republique ! '  pousses  dans  le  cimetiere. 

"On  n'entre  plus  dans  les  eglises,  raais  on  frequente  les  brasseries  et 
; ;  cabarets ;  on  y  ofHcie,  on  y  celebre  les  mysteres,  on  y  chante  les 
langes  d'une  pretendue  republique  sacro-sainte,  une,  indivisible,  demo- 
iitique,  sociale,  athenienne,  intransigeante,  despotique,  invisible  quoique 
.ant  partout.  On  y  communie  sous  differentes  especes;  le  matin  (matines) 
i  'tue  le  ver'  avec  le  vin  blanc, — il  y  a  plus  tard  les  vepres  de  I'absinthe, 
;  xquelles  on  se  ferait  un  crime  de  manquer  d'assiduite. 

"On  ne  croit  plus  en  Dieu,  mais  on  croit  pieusement  en  M.  Gambetta, 
i  MM.  Marcou,  Naquet,  Barodet,  Tartempion,  etc.,  et  en  toute  une  longue 
ianie  de  saints  et  de  dii  minores  tels  que  Goutte-Noire,  Polosse,  Boriasse 
*  Silibat,  le  heros  lyonnais. 

"  On  croit  a  '  I'immuabilite '  de  M.  Thiers,  qui  a  dit  avec  aplomb  '  Je  ne 

<  ange  jamais,*  et  qui  aujourd'hui  est  a  la  fois  le  protecteur  et  le  protege  de 
>  ux  qu'il  a  passe  une  partle  de  sa  vie  a  fusilier,  et  qu'il  fusillait  encore  hier. 

"On  croit  au  republicanisme  'immacule'  de  I'avocat  de  Cahors  qui  a 
^.e  par-dessus  bord  tous  les  principes  republicains, — qui  est  a  la  fois  de 
m  cote  le  protecteur  et  le  protege  de  M.  Thiers,  qui  hier  I'appelait  'fou 
1  'ieux,'  deportait  et  fusillait  ses  amis. 

"Tous  deux,  il  est  vrai,  en  meme  temps  protecteurs  hypocrites,  et 
;  )teges  dupes. 

"On  ne  croit  plus  aux  miracles  anciens,  mais  on  croit  a  des  miracles 
1 uveaux. 

"On  croit  a  une  republique  sans  le  respect  religieux  et  presque  fanatique 

<  s  lois. 

"On  croit  qu'on  pent  s'enrichir  en  restant  imprevoyants,  insouciants  et 
fresseux,  et  autrement  que  par  le  travail  et  I'economie. 
"  On  se  croit  libre  en  obeissant  aveuglement  et  betement  k  deux  ou  trois 

<  teries. 

"On  se  croit  independant  parce  qu'on  a  tue  ou  chasse  un  lion,  et  qu'on 
]  remplace  par  deux  douzaines  de  caniches  teints  en  jaune. 

"On  croit  avoir  conquis  le  'suffrage  universel'  en  votant  par  des  mots 
^)rdre  qui  en  font  le  contraire  du  suffrage  universel, — mene  au  vote  comme 

<  mene  un  troupeau  au  paturage,  avec  cette  difference  que  9a  ne  nourrit 
]s. — D'ailleurs,  par  ce  suffrage  universel  qu'on  croit  avoir  et  qu'on  n'a 
]3, — 11  faudrait  crozVe  que  les  soldats  doivent  commander  au  general,  les 
<8vauxmener  le  cocher; — cmVe  que  deux  radis  valent  mieux  qu'une  truffe, 
<ux  calUoux  mieux  qu'un  dlamant,  deux  crottins  mieux  qu'une  rose. 

"On  se  croit  en  Republique,  parce  que  quelques  demi-quarterons  de 
i  ceurs  occupent  les  memes  places,  emargent  les  memes  appolntements, 
]itiquent  les  memes  abus  que  ceux  qu'on  a  renverses  a  leur  benefice. 


52 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


^^On  se  croit  un  peuple  opprime,  heroique,  que  brise  ses  fers,  et  n'est 
qu'un  domestique  capricieiix  qui  aime  a  changer  de  maitres. 

On  croit  au  genie  d'avocats  de  sixieme  ordre,  qui  ne  se  sont  jetes  danj] 
la  politique  et  n'aspirent  au  gouvernement  despotique  de  la  France  que 
faute  d'avoir  pu  gagner  honnetement,  sans  grand  travail,  dans  I'exercice 
d'une  profession  correcte,  une  vie  obscure  humectee  de  chopes.  , 

''On  croit  que  des  hommes  devoyes,  declasses,  decaves,  fruits  sees,  etc.,i 
qui  n'ont  etudie  que  le  'domino  a  quatre '  et  le  '  bezigue  en  quinze  cents' 
se  reveillent  un  matin, — apres  un  sommeil  alourdi  par  le  tabac  et  la  biere— 
possedant  la  science  de  la  politique,  et  I'art  de  la  guerre ;  et  aptes  a  ^tre 
dictateurs,  generaux,  ministres,  prefets,  sous-prefets,  etc. 

"Et  les  soi-disant  conservateurs  eux-memes  croient  que  la  France  pent 
se  relever  et  vivre  tant  qu'on  n'aura  pas  fait  justice  de  ce  pretendu  suffrage 
universel  qui  est  le  contraire  du  suffrage  universel. 

"  Les  croyances  ont  subi  le  sort  de  ce  serpent  de  la  fable — coupe,  hache 
par  morceaux,  dont  chaque  tron9cn  devenait  un  serpent. 

"Les  croyances  se  sont  changees  en  monnaie — en  billon  de  credulites. 

"  Et  pour  finir  la  liste  bien  incomplete  des  croyances  et  des  credulites — 
vous  ci'oyeZf  vous,  qu'on  ne  croit  a  rien  ! " 


CHAPTER  II 


UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS 

1 .  Without  ignobly  trusting  the  devices  of  artificial  memory 
—far  less  slighting  the  pleasure  and  power  of  resolute  and 
:houghtful  memory — my  younger  readers  will  find  it  ex- 
xemely  useful  to  note  any  coincidences  or  links  of  number 
vhich  may  serve  to  secure  in  their  minds  what  may  be 
jailed  Dates  of  Anchorage,  round  which  others,  less  impor- 
ant,  may  swing  at  various  cables'  lengths. 

Thus,  it  will  be  found  primarily  a  most  simple  and  con- 
venient arrangement  of  the  years  since  the  birth  of  Christ, 
:o  divide  them  by  fives  of  centuries, — that  is  to  say,  by  the 
marked  periods  of  the  fifth,  tenth,  fifteenth,  and,  now  fast 
nearing  us,  twentieth  centuries. 

And  this — at  first  seemingly  formal  and  arithmetical — 
iivision,  will  be  found,  as  we  use  it,  very  singularly  empha- 
sized by  signs  of  most  notable  change  in  the  knowledge, 
iisciplines,  and  morals  of  the  human  race. 

2.  All  dates,  it  must  farther  be  remembered,  falling  within 
the  fifth  century,  begin  with  the  number  4  (401,  402,  etc.) ; 
and  all  dates  in  the  tenth  century  with  the  number  9  (901, 
[902,  etc.) ;  and  all  dates  in  the  fifteenth  century  with  the 
inumber  14  (1401,  1402,  etc.). 

In  our  immediate  subject  of  study,  we  are  concerned 
with  the  first  of  these  marked  centuries — the  fifth — of  which 
I  will  therefore  ask  you  to  observe  two  very  interesting 
divisions. 

All  dates  of  years  in  that  century,  we  said,  must  begin 
with  the  number  4. 

If  you  halve  it  for  the  second  figure,  you  get  42. 

And  if  you  double  it  for  the  second  figure,  you  get  48. 

53 


54 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


Add  1,  for  the  third  figure,  to  each  of  these  numbers, 
and  you  get  421^  and  481,  which  two  dates  you  will  please 
fasten  well  down,  and  let  there  be  no  drifting  about  of  themj 
in  your  heads.  \ 

For  the  first  is  the  date  of  the  birth  of  Venice  herself, 
and  her  dukedom,  (see  St.  Clark's  Rest,  Part  I.,  p.  30);^j 
and  the  second  is  the  date  of  birth  of  the  French  Venice, 
and  her  kingdom ;  Clovis  being  in  that  year  crowned  in 
Amiens. 

3.  These  are  the  great  Birthdays — Birth-dates — in  the' 
fifth  century,  of  Nations.    Its  Deathdays  we  will  count,  at 
another  time.^ 

Nor  for  dark  Rialto's  dukedom,  nor  for  fair  France's 
kingdom,  only,  are  these  two  years  to  be  remembered  above 
all  others  in  the  wild  fifth  century;  but  because  they  are 
also  the  birth-years  of  a  great  Lady,  and  greater  Lord,  of 
all  future  Christendom — St.  Genevieve,  and  St.  Benedict. 

Genevieve,  the  ''white  wave"*  (Laughing  water) — the 
purest  of  all  the  maids  that  have  been  named  from  the 
sea-foam  or  the  rivulet's  ripple,  unsullied, — not  the  troubled 
and  troubling  Aphrodite,  but  the  Leucothea  of  Ulysses,^ 
the  guiding  wave  of  deliverance. 

White  wave  on  the  blue — whether  of  pure  lake  or 
sunny  sea — (thenceforth  the  colours  of  France,  blue  field 
with  white  lilies,)  she  is  always  the  type  of  purity,  in  active 
brightness  of  the  entire  soul  and  life — (so  distinguished 
from  the  quieter  and  restricted  innocence  of  St.  Agnes), — 
and  all  the  traditions  of  sorrow  in  the  trial  or  failure  of 
noble  womanhood  are  connected  with  her  name;  Ginevra, 
in  Italian,  passing  into  Shakespeare's  Imogen ;  and  Guine- 
vere, the  torrent  wave  of  the  British  mountain  streams,  of 

*  [Ruskiri  here  notes  in  his  copy  that  ^'St.  Jerome  died  420."] 
2  [See  now,  §  30:  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  232.] 

'  [This,  however,  was  not  done.] 

*  [So  Miss  Yonge  translates  the  name,  in  the  Glossary  prefixed  to  her  History 
of  Christian  Names;  and  Ruskin  compares  it  with  the  Indian  name,  ''Laughing 
Water,"  in  Longfellow's  Hiawatha  (see  Vol.  XXiV.  p.  278).] 

^  {Odyssey,  v.  333  seq.  Compare  Munera  Pulveris,  Vol.  XVII.  p.  291  ;  St.  Mark's 
Rest,  §  76  (Vol.  XXIV.  p.  267);  and  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  78  (Vol.  XXIX. 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  55 


vhose  pollution  your  modern  sentimental  minstrels  chant 
•nd  moan  to  you,  lugubriously  useless ;  ^ — but  none  tell 
^ou,  that  I  hear,  of  the  victory  and  might  of  this  white 
vaye  of  France. 

4.  A  shepherd  maid  she  was — a  tiny  thing,  barefooted, 
)areheaded — such  as  you  may  see  running  wild  and  inno- 
;ent,  less  cared  for  now  than  their  sheep,  over  many  a  hill- 
ide  of  France  and  Italy.  Tiny  enough; — seven  years  old, 
ill  told,  when  first  one  hears  of  her :  "  Seven  times  one 
jire  seven,  (I  am  old,  you  may  trust  me,  linnet,  linnet,*)" 
{md  all  around  her — fierce  as  the  Furies,  and  wild  as  the 
vinds  of  heaven — ^the  thunder  of  the  Gothic  armies  rever- 
)erate  over  the  ruins  of  the  world. 

5.  Two  leagues  from  Paris,  {Roman  Paris,  soon  to  pass 
iway  with  Rome  herself,^)  the  little  thing  keeps  her  flock, 
lot  even  her  own,  nor  her  father's  flock,  like  David;  she  is 
he  hired  servant  of  a  richer  farmer  of  Nanterre.  Who  can 
ell  me  anything  about  Nanterre?^ — which  of  our  pilgrims 

this  omni-speculant,  omni-nescient  age  has  thought  of 
/isiting  what  shrine  may  be  there?  I  don't  know  even  on 
.vhat  side  of  Paris  it  lies,t  nor  under  which  heap  of  rail- 
way cinders  and  iron  one  is  to  conceive  the  sheep-walks 
ind  blossomed  fields*  of  fairy  Saint  Phyllis.  There  were 
iuch  left,  even  in  my  time,  between  Paris  and  St.  Denis, 
see  the  prettiest  chapter  in  all  the  Mysteries  of  Paris 
where  Fleur  de  Marie  runs  wild  in  them  for  the  first 
time,^)  but  now,  I  suppose,  Saint  Phyllis's  native  earth  is 
all  thrown  up  into  bastion  and  glacis,  (profitable  and  blessed 

*  Miss  Ingelow. 

•f  On  inquiry,  I  find  in  the  flat  between  Paris  and  Sevres. 

*  [The  reference  is  to  a  song  "Guinevere,"  which  Ruskin  disliked,  by  Sir 
Arthur  Sullivan  (words  by  Lionel  H.  Lewin).] 

*  [Clovis  expelled  the  Romans  from  Parisii  in  496  ;  Rome  in  the  early  years 
of  the  following  century  was  laid  waste  by  the  Goths.] 

^  [The  question  was  answered  by  a  correspondent  in  Fors  Clavigera:  see 
Letter  96,  §  2  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  518).] 

*  [They  are  still  shown  at  Nanterre  under  the  names  Pare  de  Sainte-Genevieve 
and  Clos  de  Sainte-Genevieve.] 

^  [Part  i.  ch.  viii.  :  Ruskin  refers  to  the  same  chapter  in  Modern  Painters^ 
vol.  iii.  (Vol.  V.  p.  372  n.).] 


56 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


of  all  saints,  and  her,  as  these  have  since  proved  them* 
selves!),  or  else  covered  with  manufactories  and  cabarets.! 
Seven  years  old  she  was,  then,  when  on  his  way  to  England\ 
from  Auxerre,  St.  Germain  passed  a  night  in  her  village,! 
and  among  the  children  who  brought  him  on  his  way  in 
the  morning  in  more  kindly  manner  than  Elisha's  convoy,^! 
noticed  this  one — wider-eyed  in  reverence  than  the  rest; 
drew  her  to  him,  questioned  her,  and  was  sweetly  answered, 
That  she  would  fain  be  Christ's  handmaid.  And  he  hung 
round  her  neck  a  small  copper  coin,  marked  with  the  cross,  .i 
Thenceforward  Genevieve  held  herself  as  "separated  from  I 
the  world."' 

6.  It  did  not  turn  out  so,  however.    Far  the  contrary. 
You  must  think  of  her,  instead,  as  the  first  of  Parisiennes.  i 
Queen  of  Vanity  Fair,  that  was  to  be,  sedately  poor  St.' 
Phyllis,  with  her  copper  crossed  farthing  about  her  neck! 
More  than  Nitocris  was  to  Egypt,  more  than  Semiramis  to 
Nineveh,  more  than  Zenobia  to  the  city  of  palm  trees — 
this  seven-years-old  shepherd  maiden  became  to  Paris  and 
her  France.     You  have  not  heard  of  her  in  that  kind?— I 
No  :  how  should  you  ? — for  she  did  not  lead  armies,  but 
stayed  them,  and  all  her  power  was  in  peace. 

7.  There  are,  however,  some  seven  or  eight  and  twenty 
lives  of  her,  I  believe ;  into  the  literature  of  which  I  cannot 
enter,  nor  need,  all  having  been  ineffective  in  producing 
any  clear  picture  of  her  to  the  modern  French  or  English 
mind;  and  leaving  one's  own  poor  sagacities  and  fancy  to 
gather  and  shape  the  sanctity  of  her  into  an  intelligible,  I 
do  not  say  a  credible,  form;  for  there  is  no  question  here 
about  belief, — the  creature  is  as  real  as  Joan  of  Arc,  and 
far  more  powerful; — she  is  separated,  just  as  St.  Martin 
is,  by  his  patience,  from  too  provocative  prelates — by  her 
quietness  of  force,  from  the  pitiable  crowd  of  feminine 
martyr  saints.  j 

There  are  thousands  of  religious  girls  who  have  never 

1  [See  2  Kings  ii.  23.] 

^  [Mrs.  Jameson,  Sacred  and  Legendary  Art,  ed.  1850,  p.  455.] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  57 


rot  themselves  into  any  calendars,  but  have  wasted  and 
vearied  away  their  lives — heaven  knows  why,  for  we  cannot ; 
)ut  here  is  one,  at  any  rate,  who  neither  scolds  herself  to 
nartyrdom,  nor  frets  herself  into  consumption,  but  becomes 
I  tower  of  the  Flock,^  and  builder  of  folds  for  them  all 
ler  days. 

8.  The  first  thing,  then,  you  have  to  note  of  her,  is 
hat  she  is  a  pure  native  GauL  She  does  not  come  as  a 
nissionary  out  of  Hungary,  or  Illyria,  or  Egypt,  or  ineffable 
;pace;  but  grows  at  Nanterre,  like  a  marguerite  in  the  dew, 
he  first  "  Heine  Blanche  "  ^  of  Gaul. 

T  have  not  used  this  ugly  word  Gaul "  before,  and 
ve  must  be  quite  sure  what  it  means,  at  once,  though  it 
vill  cost  us  a  long  parenthesis. 

9.  During  all  the  years  of  the  rising  power  of  Rome, 
ler  people  called  everybody  a  Gaul  who  lived  north  of  the 
»ources  of  Tiber.  If  you  are  not  content  with  that  general 
itatement,  you  may  read  the  article  Gallia "  in  Smith's 
lictionary,^  which  consists  of  seventy-one  columns  of  close 
jrint,  containing  each  as  much  as  three  of  my  pages  ;  and 
ells  you  at  the  end  of  it,  that  though  long,  it  is  not 
complete."  You  may,  however,  gather  from  it,  after  an 
littentive  perusal,  as  much  as  I  have  above  told  you. 

But,  as  early  as  the  second  century  after  Christ,  and 
nuch  more  distinctly  in  the  time  with  which  we  are  our- 
lelves  concerned — the  fifth — the  wild  nations  opposed  to 
Rome,  and  partially  subdued,  or  held  at  bay  by  her,  had 
resolved  themselves  into  two  distinct  masses,  belonging  to 
'.wo  distinct  latitudes.  One,  Jia^'ed  in  habitation  of  the  plea- 
sant temperate  zone  of  Europe — England  with  her  western 
mountains,  the  healthy  limestone  plateaux  and  granite 
[nounts  of  France,  the  German  labyrinths  of  woody  hill 
md  winding  thai,  from  the  Tyrol  to  the  Hartz,  and  all 

1  fMicah  iv.  8.] 

^  Reine  Blanche,"  because  named  white  wave "  (§  3)  and  here  called 
white  as  a  daisy ;  but  the  phrase  is  generally  used  with  reference  to  the  white, 
nstead  of  black,  mourning  of  the  widowed  Queens  of  France.] 

'  [Dictionary  of  Greek  and  Roman  Geography,  by  William  Smith,  1856,  vol.  i. 
jp.  934-970.] 


58 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


the  vast  enclosed  basin  and  branching  valleys  of  the  Car- 
pathians. Think  of  these  four  districts,  briefly  and  clearly,- 
as  "  Britain,"  "  Gaul,"  "  Germany,"  and  "  Dacia." '  | 

10.  North  of  these  rudely,  but  patiently,  resident  races, 
possessing  fields  and  orchards,  quiet  herds,  homes  of  a  sort,! 
moralities  and  memories  not  ignoble,  dwelt,  or  rather  drifted, 
and  shook,  a  shattered  chain  of  gloomier  tribes,  piratical 
mainly,  and  predatory,  nomad  essentially ;  homeless,  of  neces- 
sity, finding  no  stay  nor  comfort  in  earth,  or  bitter  sky:j 
desperately  wandering  along  the  waste  sands  and  drenched 
morasses  of  the  flat  country  stretching  from  the  mouths 
of  the  Rhine  to  those  of  the  Vistula,  and  beyond  Vistula 
nobody  knows  where,  nor  needs  to  know.  Waste  sands 
and  rootless  bogs  their  portion,  ice-fastened  and  cloud- 
shadowed,  for  many  a  day  of  the  rigorous  year :  shallow 
pools  and  oozings  and  windings  of  retarded  streams,  black 
decay  of  neglected  woods,  scarcely  habitable,  never  loveablajj 
to  this  day  the  inner  mainlands  little  changed  for  good*— j 
and  their  inhabitants  now  fallen  even  on  sadder  times.  1 

11.  For  in  the  fifth  century  they  had  herds  of  cattle  t 
to  drive  and  kill,  unpreserved  hunting-grounds  full  of  game 
and  wild  deer,  tameable  reindeer  also  then,  even  so  far  in 
the  south ;  spirited  hogs,  good  for  practice  of  fight  as  in 
Meleager's  time,  and  afterwards  for  bacon ;  furry  creatures 
innumerable,  all  good  for  meat  or  skin.  Fish  of  the  in- 
finite sea  breaking  their  back-fibre  nets ;  fowl  innumerable, 
migrant  in  the  skies,  for  their  flint-headed  arrows ;  bred 

*  See  generally  any  description  that  Carlyle  has  had  occasion  to  give 
of  Prussian  or  Polish  ground,  or  edge  of  Baltic  shore.^ 

f  Gigantic — and  not  yet  fossilized !  See  Gibbon's  note  on  the  death  oi 
Theodebert:  "The  King  pointed  his  spear — the  Bull  overturned  a  tree  on 
his  heady — he  died  the  same  day." — vii.  255.^  The  Horn  of  Uri  and  her 
shield,  with  the  chiefly  towering  crests  of  the  German  helm,  attest  the 
terror  of  these  aurochs  herds. 

^  [See,  further,  ch.  iii.  ;  below,  p.  90.] 

*  [See,  for  instance,  the  description  of  ^'  Preussen "  in  Book  ii.  ch.  ii.  oi 
Friedricli.^ 

^  [Chapter  41  (a  note).  Ruskin's  references  are  to  Milman's  edition  of  Gbbion 
(Murray,  1838)  ;  see  below,  p.  219  n.  On  the  Horn  of  Uri,  see  Vol.  XII.  p.  194 
and  FrcBterita,  iii.  §  8G  (Vol.  XXXV.).] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  59 


lorses  for  their  own  riding;  ships  of  no  mean  size,  and  of 
ill  sorts,  flat-bottomed  for  the  oozy  puddles,  keeled  and 
lacked  for  strong  Elbe  stream  and  furious  Baltic  on  the 
lorth, — for  mountain- cleaving  Danube  and  the  black  lake 
)f  Colchos  on  the  south. 

12.  And  they  were,  to  all  outward  aspect,  and  in  all 
^elt  force,  the  living  powers  of  the  world,  in  that  long  hour 
>f  its  transfiguration.    All  else  known  once  for  awful,  had 
)ecome  formalism,  folly,  or  shame : — the  Homan  armies,  a 
nere  sworded  mechanism,  fast  falling  confused,  every  sword 
tgainst  its  fellow ; — the  Roman  civil  multitude,  mixed  of 
laves,  slave-masters,  and  harlots ;  the  East,  cut  off  from 
Europe  by  the  intervening  weakness  of  the  Greek.  These 
tarving  troops  of  the  Black  forests  and  White  seas,  them- 
elves  half  wolf,  half  drift-wood,  (as  we  once  called  our- 
elves  Lion-hearts,  and  Oak-hearts,  so  they,)  merciless  as 
he  herded  hound,  enduring  as  the  wild  birch-tree  and  pine. 
loM  will  hear  of  few  beside  them  for  five  centuries  yet 
o  come:  Visigoths,  west  of  Vistula; — Ostrogoths,  east  of 
:  /^istula ;  radiant  round  little  Holy  Island  (Heligoland),  our 
;   wn  Saxons,  and  Hamlet  the  Dane,  and  his  foe  the  sledded 
!  ^olack  on  the  ice,^ — all  these  south  of  Baltic;  and,  pouring 
cross  Baltic,  constantly,  her  mountain-ministered  strength 
I  )candinavia,  until  at  last  she  for  a  time  rules  all,  and  the 
Gorman  name  is  of  disputeless  dominion,  from  the  North 
1   'ape  to  Jerusalem. 

I      13.  This  is  the  apparent,  this  the  only  recognized  world 
listory,  as  I  have  said,  for  five  centuries  to  come.  And 
et  the  real  history  is  underneath  all  this.    The  wander- 
i  ng  armies  are,  in  the  heart  of  them,  only  living  hail,  and 
I  hunder,  and  fire  along  the  ground.^    But  the  Suffering  Life, 
i   he  rooted  heart  of  native  humanity,  growing  up  in  eternal 
entleness,  howsoever  wasted,  forgotten,  or  spoiled, — itself 
leither  wasting,  nor  wandering,  nor  slaying,  but  unconquer- 
'  ble  by  grief  or  death,  became  the  seed  ground  of  all  love, 
I  - . 

1  [Hamlet y  Act  i.  sc.  1,  63.] 

2  [Exodus  ix.  23.] 


60 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


that  was  to  be  born  in  due  time  ;  giving,  then,  to  mortality, 
what  hope,  joy,  or  genius  it  could  receive;  and — if  there 
be  immortality — rendering  out  of  the  grave  to  the  Church 
her  fostering  Saints,  and  to  Heaven  her  helpful  Angels. 

14.  Of  this  low-nestling,  speechless,  harmless,  infinitely 
submissive,  infinitely  serviceable  order  of  being,  no  Historian 
ever  takes  the  smallest  notice,  except  when  it  is  robbed, 
or  slain.  I  can  give  you  no  picture  of  it,  bring  to  your 
ears  no  murmur  of  it,  nor  cry.  I  can  only  show  you  the 
absolute  "  must  have  been "  of  its  unrewarded  past,  and 
the  way  in  which  all  we  have  thought  of,  or  been  told,  is 
founded  on  the  deeper  facts  in  its  history,  unthought  of, 
and  untold. 

15.  The  main  mass  of  this  innocent  and  invincible 
peasant  life  is,  as  I  have  above  told  you,  grouped  in  the 
fruitful  and  temperate  districts  of  (relatively)  mountainous 
Europe, — reaching,  west  to  east,  from  the  Cornish  Land's 
End  to  the  mouth  of  the  Danube.  Already,  in  the  times 
we  are  now  dealing  with,  it  was  full  of  native  passion — 
generosity — and  intelligence  capable  of  all  things.  Dacia 
gave  to  Rome  the  four  last  of  her  great  Emperors,^ — Britain 
to  Christianity  the  first  deeds,  and  the  final  legends,  of  her 
chivalry, — Germany,  to  all  manhood,  the  truth  and  the  fire 
of  the  Frank,' — Gaul,  to  all  womanhood,  the  patience  and 
strength  of  St.  Genevieve. 

16.  The  truth,  and  the  fire,  of  the  Frank, — I  must  repeat 
with  insistence, — for  my  younger   readers   have  probably 

*  Claudius,  Aurelian,  Probus,  Constantius ;  and  after  the  division  of  the 
empire,  to  the  East,  Justinian.  "  The  emperor  Justinian  was  born  of  an 
obscure  race  of  Barbarians,  the  inhabitants  of  a  wild  and  desolate  country, 
to  which  the  names  of  Dardania,  of  Dacia,  and  of  Bulgaria  have  been  suc- 
cessively applied.  The  names  of  these  Dardanian  peasants  are  Gothic,  and 
almost  English.  Justinian  is  a  translation  of  Uprauder  (upright) ;  his  father, 
Sabatius, — in  Graeco-barbarous  language,  Stipes — was  styled  in  his  village 
'  Istock '  (Stock)." — Gibbon,  beginning  of  chap.  xl.  and  note. 

^  [In  the  first  draft  of  this  chapter  Ruskin  here  went  on  (1)  with  mattei 
afterwards  used  (in  a  revised  form)  in  Candida  Cam,  §  20  ;  then  (2)  with  that  in 
Bible  of  Amiens,  iii.  §  10  (also  revised);  next  (3)  with  Candida  Casa,  §§  22,  23; 
then  resuming  at  §  17  here.    See,  therefore,  below,  pp.  219,  91,  221.] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DKACHENFELS  61 


3een  in  the  habit  of  thinking  that  the  French  were  more 
jolite  than  true.  They  will  find,  if  they  examine  into 
:he  matter,  that  only  Truth  can  be  polished  :  and  that  all 
Are  recognize  of  beautiful,  subtle,  or  constructive,  in  the 
nanners,  the  language,  or  the  architecture  of  the  French, 
3omes  of  a  pure  veracity  in  their  nature,  which  you  will 
>oon  feel  in  the  living  creatures  themselves  if  you  love 
:hem:  if  you  understand  even  their  worst  rightly,  their 
/ery  Revolution  was  a  revolt  against  lies ;  and  against 
che  betrayal  of  Love.  No  people  had  ever  been  so  loyal 
n  vain. 

17.  That  they  were  originally  Germans,  they  themselves 
[  suppose  would  now  gladly  forget;  but  how  they  shook 
:he  dust  of  Germany  off  their  feet — and  gave  themselves  a 
lew  name — is  the  first  of  the  phenomena  which  we  have 
low  attentively  to  observe  respecting  them. 

"The  most  rational  critics,"  says  Mr.  Gibbon  in  his 
tenth  chapter,  "  suppose  that  about  the  year  240 "  {suppose 
then,  we,  for  our  greater  comfort,  say  about  the  year  250, 
Ijalf-way  to  end  of  fifth  century,  where  we  are, — ten  years 
less  or  more,  in  cases  of  *' supposing  about,"  do  not  much 
matter,  but  some  floating  buoy  of  a  date  will  be  handy 

"  About "  A.D.  250,  then,  "  a  new  confederacy  was  formed 
under  the  name  of  Franks,  by  the  old  inhabitants  of  the 
lower  Rhine  and  the  Weser." 

18.  My  own  impression,  concerning  the  old  inhabitants 
of  the  lower  Rhine  and  the  Weser,  would  have  been  that 
they  consisted  mostly  of  fish,  with  superficial  frogs  and 
ducks ;  but  Mr.  Gibbon's  note  on  the  passage  informs  us  that 
the  new  confederation  composed  itself  of  human  creatures, 
in  these  items  following : — 


1.  The  Chauci,  who  lived  we  are  not  told  where. 

2.  The  Sicambri       „        in  the  Principality  of  Waldeck. 

in  the  Duchy  of  Berg, 
on  the  banks  of  the  Lippe. 
in  the  country  of  the  Bructeri. 
in  Hessia. 


3.  The  Attuarii 

4.  The  Bructeri 

5.  The  Chamavii 

6.  The  Catti 


62 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


All  this  I  believe  you  will  be  rather  easier  in  your  minds 
if  you  forget  than  if  you  remember ;  but  if  it  please  you  « 
to  read,  or  re-read,  (or  best  of  all,  get  read  to  you  by  ' 
some  real  Miss  Isabella  Wardour,)  the  story  of  Martin 
Waldeck  in  The  Antiquary,^  you  will  gain  from  it  a  suffi- 
cient notion  of  the  central  character  of  "  the  Principality  of 
Waldeck"  connected  securely  with  that  important  German 
word  ;  "  woody  "  —  or  woodish"  I  suppose  ?  —  descriptive 
of  rock  and  half-grown  forest;  together  with  some  whole- 
some reverence  for  Scott's  instinctively  deep  foundations  of 
nomenclature.^ 

19.  But  for  our  present  purpose  we  must  also  take 
seriously  to  our  maps  again,  and  get  things  within  linear 
limits  of  space. 

All  the  maps  of  Germany  which  I  have  myself  the  privi- 
lege of  possessing,  diffuse  themselves,  just  north  of  Frank- 
fort, into  the  likeness  of  a  painted  window  broken  small  by 
Puritan  malice,  and  put  together  again  by  ingenious  church-  j 
wardens  with  every  bit  of  it  wrong  side  upwards ; — this  ' 
curious  vitrerie  purporting  to  represent  the  sixty,  seventy, 
eighty,  or  ninety  dukedoms,  marquisates,  counties,  baronies, 
electorates,  and  the  like,  into  which  hereditary  Alemannia 
cracked  itself  in  that  latitude.    But  under  the  mottling  i 
colours,  and  through  the  jotted  and  jumbled  alphabets  of  r 
distracted  dignities — besides  a  chain-mail  of  black  railroads 
over  all,  the  chains  of  it  not  in  links,  but  bristling  with 
legs,  like  centipedes,^ — a  hard  forenoon's  work  with  good 
magnifying-glass  enables  one  approximately  to  make  out 
the  course  of  the  Weser,  and  the  names  of  certain  towns 
near  its  sources,  deservedly  memorable. 

20.  In  case  you  have  not  a  forenoon  to  spare,  nor  eye- 
sight to  waste,  this  much  of  merely  necessary  abstract 
must  serve  you, — that  from  the  Drachenfels  and  its  six 

^  [See  chapter  xviii.] 

2  [On  this  subject,  see  Val  d'Arno,  §  218  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  125).] 
'  [Compare  Ruskin's  description  of  the  ordinary  maps  of  France  in  Fors  Clavigeray 
Letter  95  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  505).] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  63 


•rother  felsen,^  eastward,  trending  to  the  north,  there  runs 
nd  spreads  a  straggling  company  of  gnarled  and  mysterious 
raglets,  jutting  and  scowling  above  glens  fringed  by  coppice, 
nd  fretful  or  musical  with  stream:  the  crags,  in  pious 
ges,  mostly  castled,  for  distantly  or  fancifully  Christian 
urposes ; — the  glens,  resonant  of  woodmen,  or  burrowed 
t  the  sides  by  miners,  and  invisibly  tenanted  farther, 
nderground,  by  gnomes,  and,  above,  by  forest  and  other 
emons.  The  entire  district,  clasping  crag  to  crag,  and 
uiding  dell  to  dell,  some  hundred  and  fifty  miles  (with 
itervals)  between  the  Dragon  mountain  above  Rhine,  and 
he  Rosin  mountain — "  Hartz " — shadowy  still,  to  the  south 
f  the  riding  grounds  of  Black  Brunswickers  of  indisput- 
ble  bodily  presence  ; — shadowy  anciently  with  "  Hercynian  " 
ledge,  or  fence)  forest,  corrupted  or  coinciding  into  Hartz, 
r  Rosin  forest,  haunted  by  obscurely  apparent  foresters  of 
t  least  resinous,  not  to  say  sulphurous,  extraction. 

21,  A  hundred  and  fifty  miles  east  to  west,  say  half  as 
luch  north  to  south — about  a  thousand  square  miles  in 
i^hole — of  metalliferous,  coniferous,  and  Ghostiferous  moun- 
ain,  fluent,  and  diffluent  for  us,  both  in  mediaeval  and 
ecent  times,  with  the  most  Essential  oil  of  Turpentine, 
nd  Myrrh  or  Frankincense  of  temper  and  imagination, 
^hich  may  be  typified  by  it,  producible  in  Germany; — 
specially  if  we  think  how  the  more  delicate  uses  of  Rosin, 
s  indispensable  to  the  Fiddle-bow,  have  developed  them- 
elves,  from  the  days  of  St.  Elizabeth  of  Marburg  to 
hose  of  St.  Mephistopheles  of  Weimar.^ 

22.  As  far  as  I  know,  this  cluster  of  wayward  cliff  and 
ingle  has  no  common  name  as  a  group  of  hills  ;  and  it  is 
uite  impossible  to  make  out  the  diverse  branching  of  it 
1  any  maps  I  can  lay  hand  on :  but  we  may  remember 
asily,  and  usefully,  that  it  is  all  north  of  the  Main, — that 

^  [For  the  Siebengebirge,  see  Vol.  XII.  p.  377  n.] 

^  [From  the  days,  that  is,  when  St.  Elizabeth,  of  Hungary  (for  whom,  see 
ol.  XIX.  p.  14)  lived  and  died  at  the  castle  of  Marburg — ^^in  a  most  melodiously 
lous  sort,"  says  Carlyle  {Friedrich^  Book  ii.  ch.  vii.) — to  those  of  the  very  different 
telodies  of  Goethe's  Mephistopheles  ;  or  to  put  the  contrast  in  another  way,  from 
he  Saint's  Tragedy  (in  which  Kingsley  tells  her  story)  to  Faust.] 


64 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


it  rests  on  the  Drachenfels  at  one  end,  and  tosses  itself 
away  to  the  morning  light  with  a  concave  swoop,  up  to 
the  Hartz,  (Brocken  summit,  8700  feet  above  sea,  nothing 
higher) :  with  one  notable  interval  for  Weser  stream,  of 
which  presently.^  | 

23.  We  will  call  this,  in  future,  the  chain,  or  company, 
of  the  Enchanted  Mountains;  and  then  we  shall  all  the 
more  easily  join  on  the  Giant  mountains,  Riesen-Gebirge, 
when  we  want  them :  but  these  are  altogether  higher,j 
sterner,  and  not  yet  to  be  invaded ;  the  nearer  ones,  through 
which  our  road  lies,  we  might  perhaps  more  patly  call  the 
Goblin  mountains ;  but  that  w^ould  be  scarcely  reverent  to 
St.  Elizabeth,  nor  to  the  numberless  pretty  chatelaines  oi 
towers,  and  princesses  of  park  and  glen,  who  have  made 
German  domestic  manners  sweet  and  exemplary,  and  have 
led  their  lightly  rippling  and  translucent  lives  down  the 
glens  of  ages,  until  enchantment  becomes,  perhaps,  tooj  i 
canonical,  in  the  Almanach  de  Gotha. 

We  will  call  them  therefore  the  Enchanted  Mountains.' 
not  the  Goblin ;  perceiving  gratefully  also  that  the  Rock 
spirits  of  them  have  really  much  more  of  the  temper  of  fair} 
physicians  than  of  gnomes :  each — as  it  were  with  sensitive  : 
hazel  wand  instead  of  smiting  rod — beckoning,  out  of  sparrj  ^ 
caves,  effervescent  Brunnen,  beneficently  salt  and  warm. 

24.  At  the  very  heart  of  this  Enchanted  chain,  then— 
(and  the  beneficentest,  if  one  use  it  and  guide  it  rightly 
of  all  the  Brunnen  there,)  sprang  the  fountain  of  th( 
earliest  Frank  race;  "in  the  principality  of  AValdeck,"^- 
you  can  trace  their  current  to  no  farther  source ;  there  i 
rises  out  of  the  earth. 

"  Frankenberg "  (Burg),  on  right  bank  of  the  Eder 
nineteen  miles  north  of  Marburg,  you  may  find  marke( 
clearly  in  the  map  No.  18  of  Black's  General  Atlas, 
wherein  the  cluster  of  surrounding  bewitched  mountains 

»  [See  below,  §§  24-26.] 
2  [See  above,  pp.  m,  62.] 
a  [The  edition  of  I860.] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  65 


nd  the  valley  of  Eder-stream,  otherwise  (as  the  village 
igher  up  the  dell  still  calls  itself)  " Engel-Bach,"  "Angel 
{rook,"  joining  that  of  the  Fulda,  just  above  Cassel,  are 
Iso  delineated  in  a  way  intelligible  to  attentive  mortal 
yes,  I  should  be  plagued  with  the  names  in  trying  a 
oodcut ;  but  a  few  careful  pen-strokes,  or  wriggles,  of 
our  own  ofF-hand  touching,  would  give  you  the  concurrence 
f  the  actual  sources  of  Weser  in  a  comfortably  extricated 
)rm,  with  the  memorable  towns  on  them,  or  just  south 
f  them,  on  the  other  slope  of  the  watershed,  towards 
Iain.  Frankenberg  and  Waldeck  on  Eder,  Fulda  and 
assel  on  Fulda,  Eisenach  on  Werra,^  who  accentuates  him- 
If  into  Weser  after  taking  Fulda  for  bride,  as  Tees  the 
rreta,^  beyond  Eisenach,  under  the  Wartburg,  (of  which 
ou  have  heard  as  a  castle  employed  on  Christian  mission 
id  Bible  Society  purposes  ^) : — town-streets  below  hard  paved 
ith  basalt — name  of  it,  Iron-ach,  significant  of  Thuringian 
•mouries  in  the  old  time, — it  is  active  with  mills  for  many 
lings  yet. 

25.  The  rocks  all  the  way  from  Rhine,  thus  far,  are 
ts  and  spurts  of  basalt  through  irony  sandstone,  with  a 
rip  of  coal  or  two  northward,  by  the  grace  of  God  not 
orth  digging  for ;  at  Frankenberg  even  a  gold  mine ;  also, 
7  Heaven's  mercy,  poor  of  its  ore;  but  wood  and  iron 
ways  to  be  had  for  the  due  trouble ;  and,  of  softer  wealth 
)0ve  ground, — game,  corn,  fruit,  flax,  wine,  wool,  and 
imp !  Monastic  care  over  all,  in  Fulda's  and  Walter's 
3uses* — which  I  find  marked  by  a  cross  as  built  by  some 
ous  Walter,  Knight  or  Minnesinger  on  this  Boden-wasser,^ 

1  [Eisenach  is  in  fact  on  the  Horsel,  which  joins  the  Werra  some  distance  below 
B  town.] 

^  [See  the  lines  from  Scott  quoted  in  Modern  Painters,  vol.  iii.  (Vol.  V.  pp.  340- 
1).] 

'  [The  allusion  seems  to  be  to  the  fact  that  Luther  worked  at  his  translation 
the  Bible  in  the  Castle  (May  4,  1521-March  6,  1522).    The  room  which  he 
tbupied  is  still  shown,  with  various  relics  of  the  Reformer.] 
*  [The  town  of  "  Waltershausen."    At  Fulda  there  was  a  Benedictine  monastery.} 
^  [AH  editions  hitherto  have  read : — 

"...  Walter's  houses — which  I  find  marked  by  a  cross  as  built  by 
some  pious  Walter,  Knig^ht  of  Meiningen  on  the  Boden-wasser,  ..." 
e  MS.,  however,  shows  that  the  passage  has  been  misprinted  ;  the  words  actually 
XXXIII.  E 


66 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


Bottom  water,  as  of  water  having  found  its  way  well  down! 
at  last:  so  "  Boden-See,"  of  Rhine  well  got  down  out  of 
Via  Mala. 

26.  And  thus,  having  got  your  springs  of  Weser  clear 
from  the  rock ;  and,  as  it  were,  gathered  up  the  reins  ol 
your  river,  you  can  draw  for  yourself,  easily  enough,  the 
course  of  its  farther  stream,  flowing  virtually  straight  north 
to  the  North  Sea.  And  mark  it  strongly  on  your  sketched 
map  of  Europe,  next  to  the  border  Vistula,  leaving  out 
Elbe  3^et  for  a  time.  For  now,  you  may  take  the  whok 
space  between  Weser  and  Vistula  (north  of  the  mountains) 
as  wild  barbarian  (Saxon  or  Goth) ;  but,  piercing  the  source 
of  the  Franks  at  Waldeck,  you  will  find  them  gradually 
but  swiftly,  filling  all  the  space  between  Weser  and  the 
mouths  of  Rhine,  passing  from  mountain  foam  into  calmei 
diffusion  over  the  Netherland,  where  their  straying  forest 
and  pastoral  life  has  at  last  to  embank  itself  into  mudd} 
agriculture,  and,  in  bleak-flying  sea  mist,  forget  the  sunshim 
on  its  basalt  crags. 

27.  Whereupon,  we  must  also  pause,  to  embank  ourselve 
somewhat;  and  before  other  things,  try  what  we  can  under 
stand  in  this  name  of  Frank,  concerning  which  Gibboi 
tells  us,  in  his  sweetest  tones  of  satisfied  moral  serenity- 
"  The  love   of  liberty  was   the   ruling  passion   of  thesi 
Germans.    They  deserved,  they  assumed,  they  maintained 
the  honourable  epithet  of  Franks,  or  Freemen."^    He  doe 
not,   however,   tell  us   in   what  language  of  the  time- 
written  by  Ruskiii  are  now  substituted  in  the  text.    The  passage  is  still  not  ver 
clear.    Ruskin  appears  to  have  been  drawing  on  his  fancy  in  connexion  with  tb  ^ 
cross  which  he  noticed  in  the  map  (what,  however,  Ruskin  took  for  a  cross  i 
the  end  of  a  hatched  line  indicating  a  railway).    He  ascribes  the  foundation  C  ! 
Waltershausen  to  some  Knight  or  Minnesinger,  building  a  House  on  the  river  f 
We  may  suppose  that  the  name  AValter  had  brought  into  his  mind  the  thought  ( 
the  Minnesinger,,  Walter  von  der  Vogelweid  (for  whom  see  Vol.  XII.  p.  508),  in  th 
age  of  the  second  Frederick,  who  held  his  court  sometimes  on  the  shores  of  tli 
Lake  of  Constance  (Boden-see).     German  legends  of  the  lake — such  as  Schwab 
well-known  poem,  Der  Reiter  and  der  Boden  See — may  also  have  come  into  Ruskini  i 
mind  ;  and  thus,  as  he  was  dealing  with  the  "springs  of  Weser,"  he  calls  the  rivdj  ' 
" this  Boden-wasser,"  explaining  it  as  in  the  text;  with  which  explanation,  compai 

a  note  in  Ulric,  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  368  n.    Waltershausen  is  in  fact  on  a  streamle 
tributary  to  the  Horsel.] 

»  [Ch.  X. ;  vol.  i.  p.  435  (ed.  1838).] 


11.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  67 


tiaucian,  Sicambrian,  Chamavian,  or  Cattian  ^ — "  Frank  " 
^er  meant  Free:  nor  can  I  find  out  myself  what  tongue 
'  any  time  it  first  belongs  to ;  but  I  doubt  not  that  Miss 
onge  {History  of  Christian  Names,  Articles  on  Frey  and 
rank^)  gives  the  true  root,  in  what  she  calls  the  High 
erman  "Frang,"  Free  Lord,  Not  by  any  means  a  Free 
immoner,  or  anything  of  the  sort !  but  a  person  whose 
iture  and  name  implied  the  existence  around  him,  and 
ineath,  of  a  considerable  number  of  other  persons  who 
ere  by  no  means  "Frang,"  nor  Frangs.  His  title  is 
le  of  the  proudest  then  maintainable; — ratified  at  last 
'  the  dignity  of  age  added  to  that  of  valour,  into  the 
dgneur,  or  Monseigneur,  not  even  yet  in  the  last  cockney 
rm  of  it,  *'Mossoo,"  wholly  understood  as  a  republican 
rm ! 

28.  So  that,  accurately  thought  of,  the  quality  of  Frank- 
iss  glances  only  with  the  flat  side  of  it  into  any  meaning 

"Libre,"  but  with  all  its  cutting  edge,  determinedly, 
d  to  all  time,  it  signifies  Brave,  strong,  and  honest, 
4ove  other  men.^    The  old  woodland  race  were  never 


*  Gibbon  touches  the  facts  more  closely  in  a  sentence  of  his  22nd  chapter. 
?he  independent  warriors  of  Germany,  who  considered  truth  as  the  noblest 
their  virtues,  and  freedom  as  the  most  valuable  of  their  possessions."  ^ 
i  is  speaking  especially  of  the  Prankish  tribe  of  the  Attuarii,  against 
cm  the  Emperor  Julian  had  to  re-fortify  the  Rhine  from  Cleves  to  Basle  : 
:  the  first  letters  of  the  Emperor  Jovian,  after  Julian's  death,  "delegated 
military  command  of  Gaul  and  Illyrium  (what  a  vast  one  it  was,  we 
sdl  see  hereafter^),  to  Malarich,  a  brave  and  faithful  officer  of  the  nation 
the  Franks ; "  ^  and  they  remain  the  loyal  allies  of  Rome  in  her  last 
uggle  with  Alaric.^  Apparently  for  the  sake  only  of  an  interesting 
iety  of  language, — and  at  all  events  without  intimation  of  any  causes  of 
great  a  change  in  the  national  character, — we  find  Mr.  Gibbon  in  his 
ict  volume  suddenly  adopting  the  abusive  epithets  of  Procopius,  and  calling 
i  Franks  '^a  light  and  perfidious  nation"  (vii.  251).    The  only  traceable 


See  above,  p.  61.] 

See  p.  297  (ed.  1884).    See  further  on  the  derivation  of  the  word  Franh^ 
's  Clavigera,  Letter  43,  §  15  (Vol.  XXVIII.  pp.  122-123).] 
'Vol.  iv.  p.  5.] 
See  below,  p.  99.] 
Ch.  XXV. ;  vol.  iv.  p.  219.] 
'See  Gibbon,  ch.  xxx.  ;  vol.  v.  p.  215.    Raskin's  following  reference  is  to 
vii.  ;  not  therefore  the  ''next  volume."] 


68  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

I 

in  any  wolfish  sense  **free,"  but  in  a  most  human  sense 
Frank,  outspoken,  meaning  what  they  had  said,  and  standing 
to  it,  when  they  had  got  it  out.  Quick  and  clear  in  wore 
and  act,  fearless  utterly,  and  restless  always ; — but  idly  law 
less,  or  weakly  lavish,  neither  in  deed  nor  word.  Theiil 
frankness,  if  you  read  it  as  a  scholar  and  a  Christian,  and* 
not  like  a  modern  half-bred,  half-brained  infidel,  knowing 
no  tongue  of  all  the  world  but  in  the  slang  of  it,  is  reall} 
opposed,  not  to  Servitude, — but  to  Shyness !  It  is  tc 
this  day  the  note  of  the  sweetest  and  Frenchest  of  Frenclj 
character,  that  it  makes  simply  perfect  Servants,  Unweariec 
in  protective  friendship,  in  meekly  dextrous  omnificence 
in  latent  tutorship;  the  lovingly  availablest  of  valets, — th( 

grounds  for  this  unexpected  description  of  them  are  that  they  refuse  to  b' 
bribed  either  into  friendship  or  activity,  by  Rome  or  Ravenna ;  and  that  ii 
his  invasion  of  Italy,  the  grandson  of  Clovis  ^  did  not  previously  send  exac 
warning  of  his  proposed  route,  nor  even  entirely  signify  his  intentions  til 
he  had  secured  the  bridge  of  the  Po  at  Pavia ;  afterwards  declaring  hi 
mind  with  sufficient  distinctness  by  assaulting,  almost  at  the  same  instant 
the  hostile  camps  of  the  Goths  and  Romans,  who,  instead  of  uniting  theij 
arms,  fled  with  equal  precipitation."  ^  j 
*  For  detailed  illustration  of  the  word,  see  Val  d'Arno,  Lecture  vir 
[Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  116  seq.y,  Fors  Clavigera,  Letters  46  and  77  [Vol.  XXVII] 
p.  179,  and  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  115];  and  Chaucer,  Romcmnt  of  Rose,  1212- 
"  Next  him"  (the  knight  sibbe  to  Arthur)  ''daunced  dame  Franchise ;"- 
the  English  lines  are  quoted  and  commented  on  in  the  first  lecture  c 
Ariadne  Florentina,  §  26^  [Vol.  XXII.  p.  314];  I  give  the  French  here:— 

"  Apres  tous  ceulx  estoit  Franchise 
Que  ne  fut  ne  brune  ne  bise. 
Ains  fut  comme  la  neige  blanche 
Courtoyse  estoit,  joyeuse,  et  franche. 
Le  nez  avoit  long  et  tretis, 
Yeulx  vers,  riants ;  sourcilz  faitis ; 
Les  cheveulx  eut  tres-blons  et  longs 
Simple  fut  comme  les  coulons 
Le  cceur  eut  doulx  et  debonnaire. 
Elle  nosait  dire  ne  faire 
Nulle  riens  que  faire  ne  deust." 

And  I  hope  my  girl  readers  will  never  more  confuse  Franchise  wit 
"  Liberty." 


*  [Theodebert.] 

2  [Ch.  xh.  ;  vol.  vii.  p.  253.] 

'  [And  more  fully  in  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  43  (Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  114).] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  69 


mentally  and  personally  bonniest  of  bonnes.  But  in  no 
ipacity  shy  of  you !  Though  you  be  the  Duke  or  Duchess 
P  Montaltissimo,  you  will  not  find  them  abashed  at  your 
titude.  They  will  speak  "  up "  to  you,  when  they  have 
mind. 

29.  Best  of  servants  :  best  of  subjects,  also,  when  they 
ive  an  equally  frank  King,  or  Count,  or  Capital,  to  lead 
lem ;  of  which  we  shall  see  proof  enough  in  due  time ; — 
ut,  instantly,  note  this  farther,  that,  whatever  side-gleam 
f  the  thing  they  afterwards  called  Liberty  may  be  meant 
y  the  Frank  name,  you  must  at  once  now,  and  always 
I  future,  guard  yourself  from  confusing  their  Liberties 
ith  their  Activities.  What  the  temper  of  the  army  may 
s  towards  its  chief,  is  one  question;  whether  either  chief 
!r  army  can  be  kept  six  months  quiet, — another,  and  a 
)tally  different  one.  That  they  must  either  be  fighting 
)mebody  or  going  somewhere, — else,  their  life  isn't  worth 
ving  to  them ;  the  activity  and  mercurial  flashing  and 
ickering  hither  and  thither,  which  in  the  soul  of  it  is  set 
either  on  war  nor  rapine,  but  only  on  change  of  place, 
lood — ^tense,  and  tension ; — which  never  needs  to  see  its 
3urs  in  the  dish,^  but  has  them  always  bright,  and  on, 
Qd  would  ever  choose  rather  to  ride  fasting  than  sit 
casting, — this  childlike  dread  of  being  put  in  a  corner, 
nd  continual  want  of  something  to  do,  is  to  be  watched 
y  us  with  wondering  sympathy  in  all  its  sometimes  splen- 
id,  but  too  often  unlucky  or  disastrous  consequences  to 
he  nation  itself  as  well  as  to  its  neighbours. 

30.  And  this  activity,  which  we  stolid  beef-eaters,  before 
/e  had  been  taught  by  modern  science  that  we  were  no 
etter  than  baboons  ourselves,  were  wont  discourteously  to 
iken  to  that  of  the  livelier  tribes  of  Monkey,  did  in  fact 
0  much  impress  the  Hollanders,  when  first  the  irriguous 
•"ranks  gave  motion  and   current  to  their  marshes,  that 

*  [^'When  the  last  bullock  was  killed  and  devoured,  it  was  the  lady's  custom 
)  place  on  the  table  a  dish,  which,  on  being  uncovered,  was  found  to  contain  a 
air  of  clean  spurs — a  hint  to  the  riders  that  they  must  shift  for  the  next  meal" 
Border  Minstrelsy,  vol.  i.  p.  211  w.).] 


70 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


the  earliest  heraldry  in  which  we  find  the  Frank  power 
blazoned  seems  to  be  founded  on  a  Dutch  endeavour  tc 
give  some  distantly  satirical  presentment  of  it.  "  For,"  says> 
a  most  ingenious  historian,  Mons.  Andre  Favine, — Parisian, 
and  Advocate  in  the  High  Court  of  the  French  Parlia- 
ment in  the  year  1620"^ — "those  people  who  bordered  on 
the  river  Sala,  called  '  Salts,'  by  the  AUemaignes,"  were  on 
their  descent  into  Dutch  lands  called  by  the  Romans 
'  Franci  Salici ' — (whence  *  Salique '  law  to  come,  you  ob- 
serve) and  by  abridgment  '  Salii,'  as  if  of  the  verb  '  salire,' 
that  is  to  say  'saulter,'  to  leap" — (and  in  future  therefore 
— duly  also  to  dance — in  an  incomparable  manner) — "to  be 
quicke  and  nimble  of  foot,  to  leap  and  mount  well,  a 
quality  most  notably  requisite  for  such  as  dwell  in  watrie 
and  marshy  places;^  So  that  while  such  of  the  French  as^ 
dwelt  on  the  great  course  of  the  river"  (Rhine)  "were 
called  'Nageurs,'  Swimmers,  they  of  the  marshes  were 
called  '  Saulteurs,'  Leapers,  so  that  it  was  a  nickname 
given  to  the  French  in  regard  both  of  their  natural  dis-, 
position  and  of  their  dwelling;  as,  yet  to  this  day,  their! 
enemies  call  them  French  Toades,  (or  Frogs,  more  properly) 
from  whence  grew  the  fable  that  their  ancient  Kings  carried 
such  creatures  in  their  Armes."^ 

31.  Without  entering  at  present  into  debate  whether 
fable  or  not,  you  will  easily  remember  the  epithet  "  Salian" 
of  these  fosse-leaping  and  river-swimming  folk,  (so  that,) 
as  aforesaid,*  all  the  length  of  Rhine  must  be  refortifiedi 
against  them) — epithet  however,  it  appears,  in  its  origiw 
delicately  Saline,  so  that  we  may  with  good  discretion,  as 
we  call  our  seasoned  Mariners,  ''old  Salts,"  think  of  these 
more  brightly  sparkling  Franks  as  "Young  Salts," — ^but 
this  equivocated  presently  by  the  Romans,  with  natural 
respect  to  their  martial   fire   and   "elan,"  into  "Salii"— 

^  [From  the  title-page  of  the  1623  (English)  edition  of  Faviue's  Theater  oj 
Honour.  ] 

^  [Here  Favine  adds:  "except  they  help  themselves  with  stilts."] 
^  [Summarised  from  p.  76  (Book  ii.  ch.  3)  of  Favine.] 
*  [See  above,  p.  67,  note 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  71 


csultantes/^ — such  as  their  own  armed  priests  of  war : 
id  by  us  now  with  some  little  farther,  but  slight  equivo- 
ition,  into  useful  meaning,  to  be  thought  of  as  here  first 
alient,  as  a  beaked  promontory,  towards  the  France  we 
now  of;  and  evermore,  in  briUiant  elasticities  of  temper, 

salient  or  out-sallying  nation;  lending  to  us  English 
resently — for  this  much  of  heraldry  we  may  at  once  glance 
Q  to — their  "  Leopard,"  ^  not  as  a  spotted  or  blotted  crea- 
ire,  but  as  an  inevitably  springing  and  pouncing  one,  for 
ur  own  kingly  and  princely  shields. 

32.  Thus  much  of  their  "  Salian "  epithet  may  be 
lOUgh;  but  from  the  interpretation  of  the  Frankish  one 
e  are  still  as  far  as  ever,  and  must  be  content,  in  the 
leantime,  to  stay  so,  noting  however  two  ideas  afterwards 
atangled  with  the  name,  which  are  of  much  descriptive 
nportance  to  us. 

"  The  French  poet  in  the  first  book  of  his  Franciades " 
says  Mons.  Favine;  but  what  poet  I  know  not,  nor  can 
iquire^)  "encounters"  (in  the  sense  of  en-quarters,  or 
epicts  as  a  herald)  "certain  fables  on  the  name  of  the 
'ranch  by  the  adoption  and  composure  of  two  Gaulish 

*  Their  first  mischievous  exsultation  into  Alsace  being  invited  by  the 
'omans  themselves,  (or  at  least  by  Constantius  in  his  jealousy  of  Julian,) — 
ith  "presents  and  promises, — the  hopes  of  spoil,  and  a  perpetual  grant  of 
11  the  territories  they  were  able  to  subdue."  Gibbon,  chap.  xix.  (iii.  208). 
»y  any  other  historian  than  Gibbon,  (who  has  really  no  fixed  opinion  on 
ny  character,  or  question,  but,  safe  in  the  general  truism  that  the  worst 
len  sometimes  do  right,  and  the  best  often  do  wrong,^  praises  when  he 
irants  to  round  a  sentence,  and  blames  when  he  cannot  otherwise  edge 
ne) — it  might  have  startled  us  to  be  here  told  of  the  nation  which 
deserved,  assumed,  and  maintained  the  honourable  name  of  freemen/'  that 
'these  imdisciplined  robbers  treated  as  their  natural  enemies  all  the  subjects 
f  the  empire  who  possessed  any  property  which  they  were  desirous  of 
cquiring."  The  first  campaign  of  Julian,  which  throws  both  Franks  and 
Uemanni  back  across  the  Rhine,  but  grants  the  Salian  Franks,  under  solemn 
-ath,  their  established  territory  in  the  Netherlands,  must  be  traced  at 
nother  time.* 


1  [See  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  25  (Vol.  XXVII.  p.  454).] 
'  [Ronsard's  Franciade  (1572).] 

3  [Compare  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  42  (Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  98).] 
*  [This,  however,  was  not  done:  see  Gibbon,  ch.  xix.] 


72 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


words  joyned  together,  Phere-Encos  which  signifieth  *Beare-  i( 

Launcey  { — Shake-Lance,  we  might  perhaps  venture  to]  s 

translate,  a  lighter  weapon  than  the  Spear  beginning  here  $ 
to   quiver  in  the  hand  of  its  chivalry) — ''and  Fere-encos!  . 

then  passing  swiftly  on  the  tongue  into   Francos ; "  ^— a,  i 

derivation  not  to  be  adopted,  but  the  idea  of  the  weapon]  ii 

most  carefully, — together  with  this  following — that  ,  J 

"among  the  arms  of  the  ancient  French,  over  and  beside  the  Launce,  was  ! 

the  Battaile-Axe,  which  they  called  Anchon,  and  moreover,  yet  to  this  day,i  '* 

in  many  Provinces  of  France,  it  is  termed  an  Achon,  wherewith  they  served]  i 

themselves  in  warre,  by  throwing  it  a  farre  off  at  joyning  with  the  enemy,  ^ 

onely  to  discover  the  man  and  to  cleave  his  shield.  Because  this  Ach(m\  ■ 
was  darted  with  such  violence,  as  it  would  cleave  the  Shield,  and  compelli 

the  Maister  thereof  to  hold  down  his  arm,  and  being  so  discovered,  as^  j) 

naked  or  unarmed;  it  made  way  for  the  sooner  surprizing  of  him.  Itj  j 
seemeth,  that  this  weapon  was  proper  and  particuler  to  the  French  Souldior,;  . 

as  well  him  on  foote,  as  on  horsebacke.  For  this  cause  they  called  itj  I 
Franciscus,    Francisca,  securis  oblonga,  quam  Franci  librahant  in  Hostes.  Forf 

the  Horseman,  beside  his  shield  and  Francisca  (Armes  common,  as  wee  have!  t 

said,  to  the  Footman),  had  also  the  Lance,  which  being  broken,  and  servings  ^ 

to  no  further  effect,  he  laid  hand  on  his  Francisca,  as  we  learn  the  use  |  ]0 
of  that  weapon  in  the  Archbishop  of  Tours,  his  second  book,  and  twenty-' 
seventh  chapter."  2 

33.    It   is   satisfactory  to  find  how  respectfully  these 
lessons  of  the  Archbishop  of  Tours  were  received  by  thei  ^l 
French  knights;  and  curious  to  see  the  preferred  use  of'  ij 
the  Francisca  by  all  the  best  of  them — down,  not  only  toi  |i 
Coeur  de  Lion's  time,  but  even  to  the  day  of  Poitiers.    Inf  sr 
the  last  wrestle  of  the  battle  at  Poitiers  gate,  "  La,  fit  le 
Boy  Jehan  de  sa  main,  merveilles  d'armes,  et  tenoit  une  u 
hache  de  guerre  dont  bien  se  defFendoit  et  combattoit, — si-; 
la  quartre  partie  de  ses  gens  luy  eussent   ressemble,  la|  ^ 
journee  eust  ete  pour  eux."^    Still  more  notably,  in  thel 
episode  of  fight  which  Froissart  stops  to  tell  just  before,!  « 
between  the  Sire  de  Verclef  (on  Severn),  and  the  Picard  • 
squire  Jean  de  Helennes :  the  Englishman,  losing  his  sword, 
dismounts  to  recover  it,  on  which  Helennes  casts  his  own 

1  [Favine,  p.  65  (Book  ii.  ch.  i.).] 
«  {ibid.,  p.  66.] 

*  [Froissart,  Book  i.  part  ii.  ch.  44 ;  vol.  i.  p.  353  (Buchon's  ed.,  1835).] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  73 


t  him  with  such  aim  and  force  "qu'il  acconsuit  I'Anglois 
s  cuisses,  tellement  que  I'espee  entra  dedans  et  le  cousit 
out  parmi,  jusqu'au  hans."^ 

On  this  the  knight  rendering  himself,  the  squire  binds 
is  wound,  and  nurses  him,  staying  fifteen  days  *'pour 
amour  de  lui"  at  Chasteleraut,  while  his  life  was  in  danger; 
nd  afterwards  carrying  him  in  a  litter  all  the  way  to  his 
wn  chastel  in  Picardy.  His  ransom  however  is  6000 
obles — I  suppose  about  25,000  pounds,  of  our  present 
stimate;  and  you  may  set  down  for  one  of  the  fatallest 
igns  that  the  days  of  chivalry  are  near  their  darkening, 
ow  *'devint  celuy  Escuyer,  Chevalier,  pour  le  grand  profit 
u'il  cut  du  Seigneur  de  Verclef." 

I  return  gladly  to  the  dawn  of  chivalry,  when,  every 
our  and  year,  men  were  becoming  more  gentle  and  more 
rise;  while,  even  through  their  worst  cruelty  and  error, 
ative  qualities  of  noblest  cast  may  be  seen  asserting 
hemselves  for  primal  motive,  and  submitting  themselves 
or  future  training. 

34.  We  have  hitherto  got  no  farther  in  our  notion  of 
Salian  Frank  than  a  glimpse  of  his  two  principal  weapons, 
-the  shadow  of  him,  however,  begins  to  shape  itself  to  us 
>n  the  mist  of  the  Brocken,  bearing  the  lance  light,  pass- 
ig  into  the  javelin, — but  the  axe,  his  woodman's  weapon, 
eavy; — for  economical  reasons,  in  scarcity  of  iron,  prefer- 
blest  of  all  weapons,  giving  the  fullest  swing  and  weight 
»f  blow  with  least  quantity  of  actual  metal,  and  roughest 
orging.  Gibbon  gives  them  also  a  weighty"  sword, 
uspended  from  a  "broad"  belt:^  but  Gibbon's  epithets  are 
Jways  gratis,^  and  the  belted  sword,  whatever  its  measure, 
vas  probably  for  the  leaders  only;  the  belt,  itself  of  gold, 
he  distinction  of  the  Roman  Counts,  and  doubtless  adopted 
rom  them  by  the  allied  Frank  leaders,  afterwards  taking 

^  [Froissart,  ch.  43,  ad  fin.^  p.  853.] 
2  Ch.  XXXV.  ;  vol.  vi.  p.  95.] 

'  [See  what  Ruskin  says,  on  the  contrary,  of  Milton's  epithets  :  Sesame  and  Lilies, 
21  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  71).] 


74 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


the  Pauline  mythic  meaning  of  the  girdle  of  Truth  ^— and 
so  finally ;  the  chief  mark  of  Belted  Knighthood. 

35.  The  Shield,  for  all,  was  round,  wielded  like  a 
Highlander's  target : — armour,  presumably,  nothing  but  hard- 
tanned  leather,  or  patiently  close  knitted  hemp;  Their 
close  apparel,"  says  Mr.  Gibbon,  "accurately  expressed  the 
figure  of  their  limbs," ^  but  "apparel"  is  only  Miltonic- 
Gibbonian  for  "nobody  knows  what."  He  is  more  intel- 
ligible of  their  persons.  "The  lofty  stature  of  the  Franks, 
and  their  blue  eyes,  denoted  a  Germanic  origin;  the  war- 
like barbarians  were  trained  from  their  earliest  youth  to 
run,  to  leap,  to  swim,  to  dart  the  javelin  and  battle-axe 
with  unerring  aim,  to  advance  without  hesitation  against  a 
superior  enemy,  and  to  maintain  either  in  life  or  death, 
the  invincible  reputation  of  their  ancestors"  (vi.  95).  For 
the  first  time,  in  358,  appalled  by  the  Emperor  Julian's  I 
victory  at  Strasburg,  and  besieged  by  him  upon  the  Meuse, 
a  body  of  six  hundred  Franks  "dispensed  with  the  ancient j 
law  which  commanded  them  to  conquer  or  die."^  "Although 
they  were  strongly  actuated  by  the  allurements  of  rapine, 
they  professed  a  disinterested  love  of  war,  which  they 
considered  as  the  supreme  honour  and  felicity  of  human 
nature;  and  their  minds  and  bodies  were  so  hardened  by 
perpetual  action  that,  according  to  the  lively  expression  of 
an  orator,  the  snows  of  winter  were  as  pleasant  to  them 
as  the  flowers  of  spring."^ 

36.  These  mental  and  bodily  virtues,  or  indurations, 
were  probably  universal  in  the  military  rank  of  the  nation: 
but  we  learn  presently,  with  surprise,  of  so  remarkably 
"  free  "  a  people,  that  nobody  but  the  King  and  royal  family 
might  wear  their  hair  to  their  own  liking.  The  kings 
wore  theirs  in  flowing  ringlets  on  the  back  and  shoulders, 
— ^the  Queens,  in  tresses  rippling  to  their  feet,* — but  all 

^  [Ephesians  vi.  14  :  "  Stand,  therefore,  haviug  your  loins  girt  about  with  truth." 
Isaiah  (xi.  5)  uses  the  same  figure.] 
'  [Ch.  XXXV.  ;  vol.  vi.  p.  95.] 
3  [Ch.  xix. ;  vol.  iii.  pp.  219-220.] 

*  [Compare  below,  p.  159  n.  ;  and  Val  d'Arno,  §  212  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  124).] 

! 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  75 


;he  rest  of  the  nation  '*were  obliged,  either  by  law  or 
iustom,  to  shave  the  hinder  part  of  their  head,  to  comb 
heir  short  hair  over  their  forehead,  and  to  content  them- 
lelves  with  the  ornament  of  two  small  whiskers."^ 

37.  Moustaches, — Mr.  Gibbon  means,  I  imagine:  and  I 
ake  leave  also  to  suppose  that  the  nobles,  and  noble  ladies, 
night  wear  such  tress  and  ringlet  as  became  them.  But 
igain,  we  receive  unexpectedly  embarrassing  light  on  the 
lemocratic  institutions  of  the  Franks,  in  being  told  that 
*the  various  trades,  the  labours  of  agriculture,  and  the  arts 
)f  hunting  and  fishing,  were  exercised  by  servile  hands  for 
he  emolument  of  the  Sovereign."^ 

** Servile"  and  ''Emolument,"  however,  though  at  first 
hey  sound  very  dreadful  and  very  wrong,  are  only  Miltonic- 
iibbonian  expressions  of  the  general  fact  that  the  Frankish 
Sngs  had  ploughmen  in  their  fields,  employed  weavers  and 
miths  to  make  their  robes  and  swords,  hunted  with  hunts- 
jnen,  hawked  with  falconers,  and  were  in  other  respects 
tyrannical  to  the  ordinary  extent  that  an  English  Master 
!)f  Hounds  may  be.  "  The  mansion  of  the  long-haired  Kings 
Ivas  surrounded  with  convenient  yards  and  stables  for 
|)Oultry  and  cattle ;  the  garden  was  planted  with  useful 
vegetables  ;  the  magazines  filled  with  corn  and  wine  either 
or  sale  or  consumption ;  and  the  whole  administration  con- 
iucted  by  the  strictest  rules  of  private  economy."^ 

38.  I  have  collected  these  imperfect,  and  not  always 
extremely  consistent,  notices  of  the  aspect  and  temper  of  the 
[•"ranks  out  of  Mr.  Gibbon's  casual  references  to  them  during 
I  period  of  more  than  two  centuries, — and  the  last  pass- 
ige  quoted,  which  he  accompanies  with  the  statement  that 
'  one  hundred  and  sixty  of  these  rural  palaces  were  scattered 
:hrough  the  provinces  of  their  kingdom,"  without  telling 
iis  what  kingdom,  or  at  what  period,  must  I  think  be  held 
jlescriptive  of  the  general  manner  and  system  of  their 

1  [Ch.  XXXV.  ;  vol.  vi.  p.  94.] 

2  [Ch.  xxxviii. ;  vol.  vi.  p.  336.1 

3  [Ibid.-] 


76 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


monarchy  after  the  victories  of  Clovis.  But,  from  the  first 
hour  you  hear  of  him,  the  Frank,  closely  considered,  is 
always  an  extremely  ingenious,  well-meaning,  and  industrious 
personage ; — if  eagerly  acquisitive,  also  intelligently  conser- 
vative and  constructive  ;  an  element  of  order  and  crystal- 
line edification,  which  is  to  consummate  itself  one  day  in 
the  aisles  of  Amiens ;  and  things  generally  insuperable  and 
impregnable,  if  the  inhabitants  of  them  had  been  as  sound- 
hearted  as  their  builders,  for  many  a  day  beyond. 

39.  But  for  the  present,  we  must  retrace  our  ground  a 
little;  for  indeed  I  have  lately  observed  with  compunction, 
in  re-reading  some  of  my  books  for  revised  issue,  that  if 
ever  I  promise,  in  one  number  or  chapter,  careful  con- 
sideration of  any  particular  point  in  the  next,  the  next 
never  does  touch  upon  the  promised  point  at  all,  but  is  sure 
to  fix  itself  passionately  on  some  antithetic,  antipathic,  or 
antipodic,  point  in  the  opposite  hemisphere.  This  manner 
of  conducting  a  treatise  I  find  indeed  extremely  conducive 
to  impartiality  and  largeness  of  view;  but  can  conceive  it 
to  be — ^to  the  general  reader — not  only  disappointing,  (if 
indeed  I  may  flatter  myself  that  I  ever  interest  enough  to 
disappoint,)  but  even  liable  to  confirm  in  his  mind  some  of 
the  fallacious  and  extremely  absurd  insinuations  of  adverse 
critics  respecting  my  inconsistency,  vacillation,  and  liability 
to  be  affected  by  changes  of  the  weather  in  my  principles  or 
opinions.  I  purpose,  therefore,  in  these  historical  sketches, 
at  least  to  watch,  and  I  hope  partly  to  correct  myself  in 
this  fault  of  promise-breaking,  and  at  whatever  sacrifice  of 
my  variously  fluent  or  re-fluent  humour,  to  tell  in  each 
successive  chapter  in  some  measure  what  the  reader  justi- 
fiably expects  to  be  told. 

40.  I  left,  merely  glanced  at,  in  my  opening  chapter, 
the  story  of  the  vase  of  Soissons.^  It  may  be  found  (and 
it  is  very  nearly  the  only  thing  that  is  to  be  found  re- 
specting the  personal  life  or  character  of  the  first  Louis) 


*  [See  above,  p.  34.] 


11.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  77 

I  in  every  cheap  popular  history  of  France ;   with  cheap 
popular  moralities  engrafted  thereon.    Had  I  time  to  trace 
lit  to  its  first  sources,  perhaps  it  might  take  another  aspect. 

I  But  I  give  it  as  you  may  anywhere  find  it — asking  you 
oiily  to  consider  whether — even  as  so  read — it  may  not 
properly  bear  a  somewhat  different  moral. 

41.  The  story  is,  then,  that  after  the  battle  of  Soissons, 
in  the  division  of  Roman,  or  Gallic  spoil,  the  King  wished 
to  have  a  beautifully  wrought  silver  vase  for — ''himself," 

I I  was  going  to  write — and  in  my  last  chapter  did  mis- 
I  takenly  infer  that  he  wanted  it  for  his  better  self, — his 
j  Queen.  But  he  wanted  it  for  neither ; — it  was  to  restore 
I  to  St.  Remy,  that  it  might  remain  among  the  consecrated 
I  treasures  of  Rheims.  That  is  the  first  point  on  which 
1  the  popular  histories  do  not  insist,  and  which  one  of  his 
I  warriors,  claiming  equal  division  of  treasure,  chose  also 
j  to  ignore.  The  vase  was  asked  by  the  King  in  addition 
j  to  his  own  portion,  and  the  Frank  knights,  while  they 
I  rendered  true  obedience  to  their  king  as  a  leader,  had  not 
1  the  smallest  notion  of  allowing  him  what  more  recent  kings 
j  call  *'  Royalties  " — taxes  on  everything  they  touch.  And 
I  one  of  these  Frank  knights  or  Counts — a  little  franker 
I  than  the  rest — and  as  incredulous  of  St.  Remy's  saintship 

as  a  Protestant  Bishop,  or  Positivist  Philosopher — took 
upon  him  to  dispute  the  King's  and  the  Church's  claim,  in 
the  manner,  suppose,  of  a  Liberal  opposition  in  the  House 
of  Commons ;  and  disputed  it  with  such  security  of  support 
I  by  the  public  opinion  of  the  fifth  century,  that — the  King 
j  persisting  in  his  request — the  fearless  soldier  dashed  the 
vase  to  pieces  with  his  war-axe,  exclaiming,  "Thou  shalt 
have  no  more  than  thy  portion  by  lot." 

42.  It  is  the  first  clear  assertion  of  French  *'Liberte, 
I  Fraternite  and  Egalite,"  supported,  then,  as  now,  by  the 

destruction,  which  is  the  only  possible  active  operation  of 
''free"  personages,  of  the  art  they  cannot  produce. 

The  King  did  not  continue  the  quarrel.  Cowards  will 
think  that  he  paused  in  cowardice,  and  malicious  persons, 


78 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


that  he  paused  in  inahgnity.  He  did  pause  in  anger 
assuredly;  but  biding  its  time,  which  the  anger  of  a  strong 
man  always  can,  and  burn  hotter  for  the  waiting,  which 
is  one  of  the  chief  reasons  for  Christians  being  told  not 
to  let  the  sun  go  down  upon  it.^  Precept  which  Christians 
now-a-days  are  perfectly  ready  to  obey,  if  it  is  somebody 
else  who  has  been  injured ;  ^  and  indeed,  the  difficulty  in 
such  cases  is  usually  to  get  them  to  think  of  the  injury 
even  while  the  Sun  rises  on  their  wrath. ^ 

43.  The  sequel  is  very  shocking  indeed — to  modern  j 
sensibility.  I  give  it  in  the,  if  not  polished,  at  least  deli-  I 
cately  varnished,  language  of  the  Pictorial  History:^ — 

"About  a  year  afterwards,  on  reviewing  his  troops,  he 
went  to  the  man  who  had  struck  the  vase,  and  examining 
his  arms,  complained  that  they  were  in  bad  condition ! " 
(Italics  mine)  "and  threw  them"  (What?  shield  and 
sword?)  "on  the  ground.  The  soldier  stooped  to  recover 
them;  and  at  that  moment  the  King  struck  him  on  the 
head  with  his  battle-axe,  crying,  'Thus  didst  thou  to  the 
vase  at  Soissons.' "  The  Moral  modern  historian  proceeds  ( 
to  reflect  that  "this — as  an  evidence  of  the  condition  of 
the  Franks,  and  of  the  ties  by  which  they  were  united, — 
gives  but  the  idea  of  a  band  of  Robbers  and  their  chief" 
Which  is,  indeed,  so  far  as  I  can  myself  look  into  and 
decipher  the  nature  of  things,  the  Primary  idea  to  be 
entertained  respecting  most  of  the  kingly  and  military 
organizations  in  this  world,  down  to  our  own  day;  (unless 
perchance  it  be  the  Afghans  and  Zulus  who  are  stealing 
our  lands  in  England — instead  of  we  theirs,  in  their  several 
countries).     But  concerning  the  manner  of  this  piece  of 

*  Read  Mr.  Plimsoll's  article  on  coal  mines  for  instance."* 


1  [See  Ephesians  iv.  26.  J 

^^[Compare  what  Ruskin  says  on  the  decay  of  ''righteous  anger,"  Vol.  XX. 

3  [The  Pictorial  History  of  France  and  of  the  French  People,  vol.  i.  pp.  53-54.] 
*  [^'Explosions   in   Collieries,   and   their  Cure/'   in  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
December  1880,  vol.  8,  pp.  895-920.] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  79 


military  execution,  I  must  for  the  present  leave  the  reader 
to  consider  with  himself,  whether  indeed  it  be  less  Kingly, 
or  more  savage,  to  strike  an  uncivil  soldier  on  the  head 
with  one's  own  battle-axe,  than,  for  instance,  to  strike  a 
person  like  Sir  Thomas  More  on  the  neck  with  an  execu- 
tioner's,— using  for  the  mechanism,  and  as  it  were  guillotine 
bar  and  rope  to  the  blow — ^the  manageable  forms  of  National 
Law,  and  the  gracefully  twined  intervention  of  a  polite 
group  of  noblemen  and  bishops. 

44.  Far  darker  things  have  to  be  told  of  him  than  this, 
as  his  proud  life  draws  towards  the  close, — things  which,  if 
any  of  us  could  see  clear  through  darkness,  you  should  be 
told  in  all  the  truth  of  them.  But  we  never  can  know 
the  truth  of  Sin ;  for  its  nature  is  to  deceive,  alike,  on  the 
one  side  the  Sinner,  on  the  other  the  Judge:  Diabolic, — 
betraying  whether  we  yield  to  it,  or  condemn.  Here  is 
Gibbon's  sneer — if  you  care  for  it;  but  I  gather  first  from 
the  confused  paragraphs  which  conduct  to  it,  the  sentences 
of  praise,  less  niggard  than  the  Sage  of  Lausanne  usually 
grants  to  any  hero  who  has  confessed  the  influence  of 
Christianity : — 

45.  "Clovis,  when  he  was  no  more  than  fifteen  years  of  age,  succeeded, 
by  his  father's  death,  to  the  command  of  the  Salian  tribe.  The  narrow 
limits  of  his  kingdom  were  confined  to  the  island  of  the  Batavians,  with  the 
mcient  dioceses  of  Tournay  and  Arras  ;  and  at  the  baptism  of  Clovis,  the 
number  of  his  warriors  could  not  exceed  five  thousand.  The  kindred  tribes 
3f  the  Franks  who  had  seated  themselves  along  the  Scheldt,  the  Meuse,  the 
Moselle,  and  the  Rhine,  were  governed  by  their  independent  kings,  of  the 
Merovingian  race,  the  equals,  the  allies,  and  sometimes  the  enemies  of  the 
Salic  Prince.  When  he  first  took  the  field  he  had  neither  gold  nor  silver 
in  his  coffers,  nor  wine  and  corn  in  his  magazines;  but  he  imitated  the 
^jxample  of  Caesar,  who  in  the  same  country  had  acquired  wealth  by  the 
sword,  and  purchased  soldiers  with  the  fruits  of  conquest.  The  untamed 
spirit  of  the  Barbarians  was  taught  to  acknowledge  the  advantages  of 
regular  discipline.  At  the  annual  review  of  the  month  of  March,  their 
arms  were  diligently  inspected ;  and  when  they  traversed  a  peaceful  ter- 
ritory they  were  prohibited  from  touching  a  blade  of  grass.  The  justice 
3f  Clovis  was  inexorable ;  and  his  careless  or  disobedient  soldiers  were 
punished  with  instant  death.  It  would  be  superfluous  to  praise  the  valour 
af  a  Frank ;  but  the  valour  of  Clovis  was  directed  by  cool  and  consum- 
mate prudence.  In  all  his  transactions  with  mankind  he  calculated  the 
weight  of  interest,  of  passion,  and  of  opinion;  and  his  measures  were 


80 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


sometimes  adapted  to  the  sanguinary  manners  of  the  Germans,  and  some- 
times moderated  by  the  milder  genius  of  Rome,  and  Christianity. 

46.  "But  the  savage  conqueror  of  Gaul  was  incapable  of  examining  thei 
proofs  of  a  religion,  which  depends  on  the  laborious  investigation  of  historic 
evidence,  and  speculative  theology.  He  was  still  more  incapable  of  feeling 
the  mild  influence  of  the  Gospel,  which  persuades  and  purifies  the  heart 
of  a  genuine  convert.  His  ambitious  reign  was  a  perpetual  violation  of 
moral  and  Christian  duties :  his  hands  were  stained  with  blood,  in  peace  ^ 
as  well  as  in  war ;  and,  as  soon  as  Clovis  had  dismissed  a  synod  of  the 
Gallican  Church,  he  calmly  assassinated  all  the  princes  of  the  Merovingian 
race."  ^ 

47.  It  is  too  true ;  but  rhetorically  put,  in  the  first 
place — for  we  ought  to  be  told  how  many  '"all"  the 
princes  were ; — in  the  second  place,  we  must  note  that, 
supposing  Clovis  had  in  any  degree  "searched  the  Scrip- 
tures"^ as  presented  to  the  Western  world  by  St.  Jerome, 
he  was  likely,  as  a  soldier-king,  to  have  thought  more  of 
the  mission  of  Joshua^  and  Jehu  than  of  the  patience  of 
Christ,  whose  sufferings  he  thought  rather  of  avenging  than 
imitating :  and  the  question  whether  the  other  Kings  of  the 
Franks  should  either  succeed  him,  or,  in  envy  of  his  en- 
larged kingdom,  attack  and  dethrone,  was  easily  in  his 
mind  convertible  from  a  personal  danger  into  the  chance  of 
the  return  of  the  whole  nation  to  idolatry.  And,  in  the 
last  place,  his  faith  in  the  Divine  protection  of  his  cause 
had  been  shaken  by  his  defeat  before  Aries  by  the  Ostro- 
goths ;  and  the  Frank  leopard  had  not  so  wholly  changed 
his  spots  ^  as  to  surrender  to  an  enemy  the  opportunity  of 
a  first  spring. 

*  The  likeness  was  afterwards  taken  up  by  legend,  and  the  walls  of 
Angouleme,  after  the  battle  of  Poitiers,  are  said  to  have  fallen  at  the  sound 
of  the  trumpets  of  Clovis.  A  miracle,''  says  Gibbon,  which  may  be 
reduced  to  the  supposition  that  some  clerical  engineers  had  secretly  under- 
mined the  foundations  of  the  rampart."  *  I  cannot  too  often  warn  my  honest 
readers  against  the  modern  habit  of  reducing"  all  history  whatever  to 
"the  supposition  that"  .  .  .  etc.,  etc.  The  legend  is  of  course  the  natural 
and  easy  expansion  of  a  metaphor. 


^  [Ch.  xxxviii. ;  vol.  vi.  p.  294.] 

[John  V.  39.] 
^   Jeremiah  xiii.  23.] 
^  [Ch.  xxxviii.  ;  vol.  vi.  p.  81 7-] 


11.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  81 

48.  Finally,  and  beyond  all  these  personal  questions, 
he  forms  of  cruelty  and  subtlety — the  former,  observe, 
rising  much  out  of  a  scorn  of  pain  which  was  a  condition 
|f  honour  in  their  women  as  well  as  men,  are  in  these 
ivage  races  all  founded  on  their  love  of  glory  in  war, 
i^hich  can  only  be  understood  by  comparing  what  remains 
jf  the  same  temper  in  the  higher  castes  of  the  North 
junerican  Indians ;  and,  before  tracing  in  final  clearness  the 
jctual  events  of  the  reign  of  Clovis  to  their  end,  the  reader 
|dll  do  well  to  learn  this  list  of  the  personages  of  the 
ireat  Drama,  taking  to  heart  the  meaning  of  the  naine  of 
ich,  both  in  its  probable  effect  on  the  mind  of  its  bearer, 

I  ad  in  its  fateful  expression  of  the  course  of  their  acts,  and 
le  consequences  of  it  to  future  generations : — 

(1.)  Clovis.  Frank  form,  Hluodoveh.  '^Glorious  Holiness,"  or  consecra- 
tion. Latin  Chlodovisus,  when  baptized  by  St.  Remj,  softening 
afterwards  through  the  centuries  into  Lhodovisus,  Ludovicus, 
Louis. 

(2.)  Albofleda.  "  White  household  fairy  "  }  His  youngest  sister ;  married 
Theodoric  (Theutreich,  "  People's  ruler  the  great  King  of  the 
Ostrogoths. 

(3.)  Clotilde.  Hlod-hilda.  "  Glorious  Battle-maid."  His  wife.  «  Hilda " 
first  meaning  Battle,  pure ;  and  then  passing  into  Queen  or 
Maid  of  Battle.  Christianized  to  Ste  Clotilde  in  France,  and 
Ste  Hilda  of  Whitby  cHff. 

(3.)  Clotilde.  His  only  daughter.  Died  for  the  Catholic  faith,  under 
Arian  persecution. 

(4.)  Childebert.  His  eldest  son  by  Clotilde,  the  first  Frank  King  in 
Paris.  "Battle  Splendour,"  softening  into  Hildebert,  and  then 
Hildebrandt,  as  in  the  Nibelung. 

(5.)  Chlodomir.    "  Glorious  Fame."    His  second  son  by  Clotilde. 

(6.)  Clotaire.  His  youngest  son  by  Clotilde ;  virtually  the  destroyer  of 
his  father's  house.    "  Glorious  Warrior." 

(7.)  Chlodowald.  Youngest  son  of  Chlodomir.  "  Glorious  Power,"  after- 
wards "St.  Cloud." 

49.  I  will  now  follow  straight,  through  their  light  and 
ladow,  the  course  of  Clovis'  reign  and  deeds. 

A.D.  481.   Crowned,  when   he  was  only  fifteen.  Five 
3ars  afterwards,  he  challenges,  "in  the  spirit,  and  almost 
the  language  of  chivalry,"^  the  Roman  governor  Syagrius, 

1  [Gibbon,  vol.  vi.  p.  297.] 
XXXIII.  F 


82 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


holding  the  district  of  Rheims  and  Soissons.    "  Campum  j 

sibi  prgeparari  jussit — he  commanded  his  antagonist  to  pre-|  [ 

pare  him  a  battle  field  " — see  Gibbon's  note  and  referencej  j 

chap,  xxxviii.  The  Benedictine  abbey  of  Nogent  was  after-  .  | 
wards   built  on  the  field,  marked  by  a  circle  of  Paganj 

sepulchres.    "Clovis  bestowed  the  adjacent  lands  of  Leuill)^  .j 

and  Coucy  on  the  church  of  Rheims."^^  j 

A.D.  485.  The  Battle  of  Soissons.    Not  dated  by  Gibbon;  f 

the  subsequent  death  of  Syagrius  at  the   court  of  (th^  j 

younger)  Alaric,  was  in  486 — take  485  for  the  battle.        \  ^ 

50.  A.D.  493.  I  cannot  find  any  account  of  the  relation^  j 

between  Clovis  and  the  King  of  Burgundy,  the  uncle  oi  j 

Clotilde,  which  preceded  his  betrothal  to  the  orphan  princessi  | 

Her  uncle,  according  to  the  common  history,  had  killed  j 

both   her  father   and    mother,   and   compelled   her   sisteij  i 

to  take  the  veil — motives  none  assigned,  nor  authorities!  jt 

Clotilde  herself  was  pursued  on  her  way  to  France, t  anc  i 

the  litter  in  which  she  travelled  captured,  with  part  of  hei  i 

marriage  portion.    But  the  princess   herself  mounted  or  i 

*  When? — for  this  tradition,  as  well  as  that  of  the  vase,  points  to  ^  fj 

friendship  between  Clovis  and  St.  Remy,  and  a  singular  respect  on  th^  ,j 

King's  side  for  the  Christians  of  Gaul,  though  he  was  not  yet  himself  „ 
converted. 

f  It  is  a  curious  proof  of  the  want  in  vulgar  historians  of  the  slightes 

sense  of  the  vital  interest  of  anything  they  tell,  that  neither  in  Gibbom  ^ 
nor  in  Messrs.  Bussey  and  Gaspey,^  nor  in  the  elaborate  Histoire  des  Villel 
de  France^  can  I  find,  with  the  best  research  my  winter's  morning  allows 

what  city  was  at  this  time  the  capital  of  Burgundy,  or  at  least  in  whiclii  j. 

of  its  four  nominal  capitals, — Dijon,  Besan9on,  Geneva,  and  Vienne, — Clotild|  j^, 

was  brought  up.    The  evidence  seems  to  me  in  favour  of  Vienne — (callec  ^ 

always  by  Messrs.  B.  and  G.,  "Vienna,"*  with  what  effect  on  the  minds  oi  ,|' 

their  dimly  geographical  readers  I  cannot  say) — the  rather  that  Clotilde'|  ^ 

mother  is  said  to  have  been  "thrown  into  the  Rhone  with  a  stone  roum  ^ 
her  neck."    The  author  of  the  introduction  to  "  Bourgogne  "  in  the  llisim 


^  [Gibbon,  vol.  vi.  p.  297  n.] 

2  [Authors  of  The  Pictorial  History  of  France :  see  above,  p.  39  n.] 
'  [Histoire  des   Villes  de  France,   avec  une  introduction  gentrale  pour  chaqu 
province,  par  M.  Aristide  Guilbert  et  une  Societe  de  Membres  de  I'lnstitut,  etc. 
6  vols.,  Paris,  1844.    Ruskin  kept  the  book  near  his  hands  while  writing  Our  Father 
have  Told  Us:  see  the  plan  of  his  study,  Vol.  XXIII.  p.  Ixviii.] 
*  [See,  e.g.,  vol.  i.  p.  69.] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  83 


)rseback,  and  rode,  with  part  of  her  escort,  forward  into 
ranee,  "ordering  her  attendants  to  set  fire  to  everything 
at  pertained  to  her  uncle  and  his  subjects  which  they 
ight  meet  with  on  the  way."^ 

51.  The  fact  is  not  chronicled,  usually,  among  the  say- 
gs  or  doings  of  the  Saints :  but  the  punishment  of  Kings 

destroying  the  property  of  their  subjects,  is  too  well 
cognized  a  method  of  modern  Christian  warfare  to  allow 
(ir  indignation  to  burn  hot  against  Clotilde ;  driven,  as  she 
is,  hard  by  grief  and  wrath.  The  years  of  her  youth  are 
ibt  counted  to  us ;  Clovis  was  already  twenty-seven,  and 
^  three  years  maintained  the  faith  of  his  ancestral  religion 
ainst  all  the  influence  of  his  queen. 

52.  A.D.  496.  I  did  not  in  the  opening  chapter^  attach 
arly  enough  importance  to  the  battle  of  Tolbiac,  thinking 

it  as  merely  compelling  the  Alemanni  to  recross  the 
line,  and  establishing  the  Frank  power  on  its  western 
nk.  But  infinitely  wider  results  are  indicated  in  the 
ort  sentence  with  which  Gibbon  closes  his  account  of  the 


Filles  is  so  eager  to  get  his  little  spiteful  snarl  at  anything  like  reli- 
n  anywhere,  that  he  entirely  forgets  the  existence  of  the  first  queen  of 
.nee, — never  names  her,  nor,  as  such,  the  place  of  her  birth, — but  con- 
t  )utes  only  to  the  knowledge  of  the  young  student  this  beneficial  quota, 
t  Gondeband,  "  plus  politique  que  guerrier,  trouva  au  milieu  de  ses  con- 
verses theologiques  avec  Avitus,  eveque  de  Fienne,  le  temps  de  faire  mourir 
trois  freres  et  de  recueillir  leur  heritage/* 

The  one  broad  fact  which  my  own  readers  will  find  it  well  to  remember 
that  Burgundy,  at  this  time,  by  whatever  king  or  victor  tribe  its  in- 
)itants  may  be  subdued,  does  practically  include  the  whole  of  French 
Stitzerland,  and  even  of  the  German,  as  far  east  as  Vindonissa : — the  Reuss, 
fi'n  Vindonissa  through  Lucerne  to  the  St.  Gothard  being  its  effective 
ejtern  boundary;  that  westward — it  meant  all  Jura,  and  the  plains  of  the 
Sbne ;  and  southward,  included  all  Savoy  and  Dauphine.    According  to  the 
hor  of  La  Suisse  Histoiique  ^  Clotilde  was  first  addressed  by  Clovis's  herald 
^uised  as  a  beggar,  while  she  distributed  alms  at  the  gate  of  St.  Pierre 
Geneva ;  and  her  departure  and  pursued  flight  into  France  were  from 
on. 


The  Pictorial  History  of  France^  vol.  i.  ch.  ii.  p.  55.] 
See  above,  pp.  34,  39.] 

La  Suisse  Histoiique  et  Pitioresque.    Premiere  Partie :  La  Suisse  HistoriquCf 
H.  Gaullieur:  Geneva,  1855,  pp.  45,  46.] 


84 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


battle.  "After  the  conquest  of  the  western  provinces,  th 
Franks  alone  retained  their  ancient  possessions  beyond  th 
Rhine.  They  gradually  subdued  and  civilized  the  exhauster 
countries  as  far  as  the  Elbe  and  the  mountains  of  Bohemia 
and  the  peace  of  Europe  was  secured  by  the  obedience  c| 
Germany."  ^  | 

53.  For,  in  the  south,  Theodoric  had  already  "  sheathe 
the  sword  in  the  pride  of  victory  and  the  vigour  of  h] 
age — and  his  farther  reign  of  three  and  thirty  years  ws 
consecrated  to  the  duties  of  civil  government."  ^  Even  whel 
his  son-in-law,  Alaric,  fell  by  Clovis'  hand  in  the  battl 
of  Poitiers,  Theodoric  was  content  to  check  the  Fran 
power  at  Aries,  without  pursuing  his  success,  and  to  pn 
tect  his  infant  grandchild,  correcting  at  the  same  tiiil 
some  abuses  in  the  civil  government  of  Spain.  So  thr 
the  healing  sovereignty  of  the  great  Goth  was  establishe 
from  Sicily  to  the  Danube — and  from  Sirmium  to  tl 
Atlantic  ocean.  ) 

54.  Thus,  then,  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century,  yc 
have  Europe  divided  simply  by  her  watershed ;  and  t^ 
Christian  kings  reigning,  with  entirely  beneficent  and  healtl| 
power — one  in  the  north — one  in  the  south — the  mightie  ; 
and  v/orthiest  of  them  married  to  the  other's  younge  i 
sister:  a  saint  queen  in  the  north — and  a  devoted  ar 
earnest  Catholic  woman,  queen  mother  in  the  south.  It 

a  conjunction  of  things  memorable  enough  in  the  EartH  i 
history, — much  to  be  thought  of,  oh  fast  whirling  read^  J 
if  ever,  out  of  the  crowd  of  pent  up  cattle  driven  acrd  : 
Rhine,  or  Adige,  you  can  extricate  yourself  for  an  hoi^  f 
to  walk  peacefully  out  of  the  south  gate  of  Cologne, 
across  Fra  Giocondo's  bridge  at  Verona — and  so  pausiiij  i 
look  through  the  clear  air  across  the  battlefield  of  Tolbia 
to  the  blue  Drachenfels ;  or  across  the  plain  of  St.  Ambrog 

^  [Ch.  xxxviii.  ;  vol,  vi.  p.  800.] 

*  [Ch.  xxxix. ;  vol.  vii.  p.  25.    But  Gibbon  says:        .  .  age.    A  reign  of  thir 
three  years  ..."  viz.,  493-526.] 

^  [About  twenty-four  miles  from  Cologne.] 


II.  UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS  85 


:  the  mountains  of  Garda.  For  there  were  fought — if  you 
i  ll  think  closely — ^the  two  victor-battles  of  the  Christian 
iorld.  Constantine's  only  gave  changed  form  and  dying 
lour  to  the  falling  walls  of  Rome;  but  the  Frank  and 
bthic  races,  thus  conquering  and  thus  ruled,  founded  the 
■  Is  and  established  the  laws  which  gave  to  all  future 
larope  her  joy,  and  her  virtue.  And  it  is  lovely  to  see 
l»w,  even  thus  early,  the  Feudal  chivalry  depended  for 
i;  life  on  the  nobleness  of  its  womanhood.  There  was 
!•  visio7i  seen,  or  alleged,  at  Tolbiac.  The  King  prayed 
Inply  to  the  God  of  Clotilde.^  On  the  morning  of  the 
Ittle  of  Verona,  Theodoric  visited  the  tent  of  his  mother 
i  d  his  sister,  "  and  requested  that  on  the  most  illus- 
I  ous  festival  of  his  life,  they  would  adorn  him  with 
te  rich  garments  which  they  had  worked  with  their  own 
linds."' 

55.  But  over  Clovis,  there  was  extended  yet  another  in- 
Uence — ^greater  than  his  queen's.  When  his  kingdom  was 
1st  extended  to  the  Loire,  the  shepherdess  of  Nanterre 
us  already  aged, — no  torch-bearing  maid  of  battle,  like 
l  otilde,  no  knightly  leader  of  deliverance  like  Jeanne,^  but 
ley  in  meekness  of  wisdom,  and  now  "filling  more  and 
lore  with  crystal  light."*  Clovis's  father  had  known  her; 
I  himself  made  her  his  friend,  and  when  he  left  Paris  on 
te  campaign  of  Poitiers,  vowed  that  if  victorious,  he  would 
I  did  a  Christian  church  on  the  hills  of  Seine.  He  returned 
i  victory,  and  with  St.  Genevieve  at  his  side,  stood  on  the 
i;e  of  the  ruined  Roman  Thermae,  just  above  the  "Isle" 
[  Paris,  to  fulfil  his  vow:  and  to  design  the  limits  of 
t  e  foundations  of  the  first  metropolitan  church  of  Prankish 
liiristendom.^ 

^  [See  above^  p.  34.] 

^  [Gibbon^  ch.  xxxix.  ;  vol.  vii.  p.  15.    Compare,  below,  p.  434.] 

3  [For  other  references  to  Joan  of  Arc,  see  Vol.  XXV.  p.  350,  Vol.  XXVII. 
[  68,  Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  112 ;  and  below,  p.  128.] 

*  [Wordsworth  :  To    (Lady  Fitzgerald)  in  her  Seventieth  Year.     Quoted  also 

iVol.  IV.  p.  175,  and     Notes  on  Bewick"  (Vol.  XXX.  p.  288).] 

°  [The  basilica  of  St.  I*eter  and  St.  Paul.  See  the  Histoire  des  Villes  de  FrancCy 
s .  vi.  p.  655.] 


86 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


The  King  "gave  his  battle-axe  the  swing,"  ^  and  tossec 
it  with  his  full  force. 

Measuring  with  its  flight  also,  the  place  of  his  owi) 
grave,  and  of  Clotilde's,  and  St.  Genevieve's.  i 

There  they  rested,  and  rest, — in  soul, — together.  "Lai 
CoUine  tout  entiere  porte  encore  le  nom  de  la  patronne' 
de  Paris ;  une  petite  rue  obscure  a  garde  celui  du  Ro 
Conquerant."  ^ 

^  [Histoire  de  France,  par  Emile  Keller:  Tours,  1876,  vol.  i.  p.  49.  For  hii 
"Francisca,"  or  axe,  see  above,  §  32  (p.  72),  and  Fors  Clavigera^  Letter  4.' 
(Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  123).] 

*  [Keller,  ut  sup."] 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  LION  TAMER  1 

It  has  been  often  of  late  announced  as  a  new  discovery, 
lat  man  is  a  creature  of  circumstances  ;  and  the  fact  has 
|een  pressed  upon  our  notice,  in  the  hope,  which  appears 
>  some  people  so  pleasing,  of  being  able  at  last  to  resolve 
ito  a  succession  of  splashes  in  mud,  or  whirlwinds  in  air, 
le  circumstances "  answerable  for  his  creation.  But  the 
ore  important  fact,  that  his  nature  is  not  levelled,  like 

mosquito's,  to  the  mists  of  a  marsh,  nor  reduced,  like  a 
lole's,  beneath  the  crumblings  of  a  burrow,  but  has  been 
idowed  with  sense  to  discern,  and  instinct  to  adopt,  the 
Dnditions  which  will  make  of  it  the  best  that  can  be,  is 
|ery  necessarily  ignored  by  philosophers  who  propose,  as  a 
^autiful  fulfilment  of  human  destinies,  a  life  entertained 
Y  scientific  gossip,  in  a  cellar  lighted  by  electric  sparks, 
armed  by  tubular  inflation,  drained  by  buried  rivers,  and 
;d,  by  the  ministry  of  less  learned  and  better  provisioned 
tees,  with  extract  of  beef,  and  potted  crocodile.^ 

2.  From  these  chemically  analytic  conceptions  of  a 
'aradise  in  catacombs,  undisturbed  in  its  alkaline  or  acid 
jirtues  by  the  dread  of  Deity,  or  hope  of  futurity,  I 
now  not  how  far  the  modern  reader  may  willingly  with- 
raw  himself  for  a  little  time,  to  hear  of  men  who,  in  their 
arkest  and  most  foolish  day,  sought  by  their  labour  to 
lake  the  desert  as  the  garden  of  the  Lord,^  and  by  their 

^  [A  proof  of  §§  1-38  of  this  chapter  at  Brantwood  gives  the  title  as  "  Monte 
assino."] 

2  [For  the  reference  in   'Spotted  crocodile,"  see  Fors  Clavigera^  Letter  27 
^ol.  XXVII.  pp.  503,  504).] 
2  [Isaiah  li.  3.] 

87 


88 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


love  to  become  worthy  of  permission  to  live  with  Him  for 
ever.  It  has  nevertheless  been  only  by  such  toil,  and  in 
such  hope,  that,  hitherto,  the  happiness,  skill,  or  virtue  of 
man  has  been  possible :  and  even  on  the  verge  of  the 
new  dispensation,  and  promised  Canaan,  rich  in  beatitudes] 
of  iron,  steam,  and  fire,  there  are  some  of  us,  here  and 
there,  who  may  pause  in  filial  piety  to  look  back  towards 
that  wilderness  of  Sinai  in  which  their  fathers  worshipped 
and  died. 

3.  Admitting,  however,  for  the  moment,  that  the  main 
streets  of  Manchester,  the  district  immediately  surrounding 
the  Bank  in  London,  and  the  Bourse  and  Boulevards  of 
Paris,  are  already  part  of  the  future  kingdom  of  Heaven, 
when  Earth  shall  be  all  Bourse  and  Boulevard, — the  world 
of  which  our  fathers  tell  us  was  divided  to  them,  as  you 
already  know,  partly  by  climates,  partly  by  races,  partly 
by  times ;  and  the  circumstances "  under  which  a  man's 
soul  was  given  to  him,  had  to  be  considered  under  these 
three  heads  : — In  what  climate  is  he  ?  Of  what  race  ?  At 
what  time  ? 

He  can  only  be  what  these  conditions  permit.  With 
appeal  to  these,  he  is  to  be  heard ; — understood,  if  it  may 
be; — ^judged,  by  our  love,  first — by  our  pity,  if  he  need  it 
— by  our  humility,  finally  and  always.  ' 

4.  To  this  end,  it  is  needful  evidently  that  we  should 
have  truthful  maps  of  the  world  to  begin  with,  and  truth- 
ful maps  of  our  own  hearts  to  end  with ;  neither  of  these 
maps  being  easily  drawn  at  any  time,  and  perhaps  least  of 
all  now — when  the  use  of  a  map  is  chiefly  to  exhibit  hotels 
and  railroads;  and  humility  is  held  the  disagreeablest  and 
meanest  of  the  Seven  mortal  Sins. 

5.  Thus,  in  the  beginning  of  Sir  Edward  Creasy's  His- 
tory of  England,  you  find  a  map  purporting  to  exhibit  the 
possessions  of  the  British  Nation — illustrating  the  extremely 
wise  and  courteous  behaviour  of  Mr.  Fox  to  a  Frenchman 
of  Napoleon's  suite,  in  **  advancing  to  a  terrestrial  globe 
of  unusual  magnitude  and  distinctness,  spreading  his  arms 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


89 


ound  it,  over  both  the  oceans  and  both  the  Indies,"  and 
pbserving,  in  this  impressive  attitude,  that  "  while  EngUsh- 
nen  Uve,  they  overspread  the  whole  world,  and  clasp  it  in 
:he  circle  of  their  power."  ^ 

6.  Fired  by  Mr.  Fox's  enthusiasm,  the  otherwise  seldom 
iery  Sir  Edward  proceeds  to  tell  us  that  "  our  island  home 
s  the  favourite  domicile  of  freedom,  empire  and  glory," 
vithout  troubling  himself,  or  his  readers,  to  consider  how 
ong  the  nations  over  whom  our  freedom  is  imperious,  and 
n  whose  shame  is  our  glory,  may  be  satisfied  in  that 
irrangement  of  the  globe  and  its  affairs;  or  may  be  even 
it  present  convinced  of  their  degraded  position  in  it  by  his 
nethod  of  its  delineation. 

For,  the  map  being  drawn  on  M creator's  projection,  re- 
)resents  therefore  the  British  dominions  in  North  America 
[is  twice  the  size  of  the  States,  and  considerably  larger  than 
ill  South  America  put  together :  while  the  brilliant  crimson 
N\i\\  which  all  our  landed  property  is  coloured  cannot  but 
mpress  the  innocent  reader  with  the  idea  of  a  universal 
i[lush  of  freedom  and  glory  throughout  all  those  acres  and 
latitudes.  So  that  he  is  scarcely  likely  to  cavil  at  results 
io  marvellous  by  inquiring  into  the  nature  and  completeness 
3f  our  government  at  any  particular  place, — for  instance 
n  Ireland,  in  the  Hebrides  or  at  the  Cape. 

7.  In  the  closing  chapter  of  the  first  volume  of  The 
Laws  of  Fesole  I  have  laid  down  the  mathematical  prin- 
ciples of  rightly  drawing  maps ;  ^—principles  which  for  many 
reasons  it  is  well  that  my  young  readers  should  learn;  the 
jpundamental  one  being  that  you  cannot  flatten  the  skin  of 
|an  orange  without  splitting  it,  and  must  not,  if  you  draw 
countries  on  the  unsplit  skin,  stretch  them  afterwards  to  fill 
the  gaps. 

The  British  pride  of  wealth  which  does  not  deny  itself 

^  [History  of  England,  Jrom  the  Earliest  to  the  Present  Time,  in  5  vols,  (only  two 
published),  1869,  vol.  i.  p.  4.  Creasy  quotes  the  anecdote  from  the  first  volume 
of  Thiers's  History  of  the  Consulate  and  the  Empire.] 

I    ^  [Not  the  closing  chapter,  but  the  last  but  one :  Vol.  XV.  pp.  440  seq.] 


90 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


the  magnificent  convenience  of  penny  Walter  Scotts  and 
penny  Shakespeares,  may  assuredly,  in  its  future  greatness, 
possess  itself  also  of  penny  universes,  conveniently  spinnable 
on  their  axes.  I  shall  therefore  assume  that  my  readers 
can  look  at  a  round  globe,  while  I  am  talking  of  the 
world ;  and  at  a  properly  reduced  drawing  of  its  surfaces, 
when  I  am  talking  of  a  country. 

8.  Which,  if  my  reader  can  at  present  do — or  at  least 
refer  to  a  fairly  drawn  double- circle  map  of  the  globe  with 
converging  meridians — I  will  pray  him  next  to  observe, 
that,  although  the  old  division  of  the  world  into  four 
quarters  is  now  nearly  effaced  by  emigration  and  Atlantic 
cable,  yet  the  great  historic  question  about  the  globe  is 
not  how  it  is  divided,  here  and  there,  by  ins  and  outs 
of  land  or  sea ;  but  how  it  is  divided  into  zones  all  round, 
by  irresistible  laws  of  light  and  air.  It  is  often  a  matter 
of  very  minor  interest  to  know  whether  a  man  is  an 
American  or  African,  a  European  or  an  Asiatic.  But  it 
is  a  matter  of  extreme  and  final  interest  to  know  if  he  be 
a  Brazilian  or  a  Patagonian,  a  Japanese  or  a  Samoyede. 

9.  In  the  course  of  the  last  chapter,^  I  asked  the  reader 
to  hold  firmly  the  conception  of  the  great  division  of 
climate,  which  separated  the  wandering  races  of  Norway 
and  Siberia  from  the  calmly  resident  nations  of  Britain, 
Gaul,  Germany,  and  Dacia. 

Fasten  now  that  division  well  home  in  your  mind,  by 
drawing,  however  rudely,  the  course  of  the  two  rivers,  little 
thought  of  by  common  geographers,  but  of  quite  unspeak- 
able importance  in  human  history,  the  Vistula  and  the 
Dniester. 

10.  They  rise  within  thirty  miles  of  each  other,^  and 
each  runs,  not  counting  ins  and  outs,  its  clear  three  hun- 
dred miles, — the  Vistula  to  the  north-west,  the  Dniester 


*  Taking  the  "  San  "  branch  of  Upper  Vistula. 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


91 


to  the  south-east :  the  two  of  them  together  cut  Europe 
straight  across,  at  the  broad  neck  of  it, — and,  more  deeply 
looking  at  the  thing,   they  divide   Europe,  properly  so 
called — Europa's  own,  and  Jove's — the  small  educationable, 
civilizable,  and  more  or  less  mentally  rational  fragment  of 
the  globe,  from  the  great  Siberian  wilderness,  Cis-Ural 
and  Trans-Ural ;  the  inconceivable  chaotic  space,  occupied 
datelessly  by   Scythians,  Tartars,  Huns,  Cossacks,  Bears, 
Ermines,  and  Mammoths,  in  various  thickness  of  hide,  frost 
I  of  brain,  and  woe  of  abode — or  of  unabiding.  Nobody's 
history  worth  making  out  has  anything  to  do  with  them ; 
for  the  force  of  Scandinavia  never  came  round  by  Finland 
at  all,  but  always  sailed  or  paddled  itself  across  the  Baltic, 
or  down  the  rocky  west   coast;   and  the   Siberian  and 
Russian  ice-pressure  merely  drives  the  really  memorable 
I  races  into  greater  concentration,  and  kneads  them  up  in 
i  fiercer  and  more   necessitous   exploring  masses.    But  by 
I  those  exploring  masses,  of  true  European  birth,  our  own 
i  history  was  fashioned  for  ever ;  and,  therefore,  these  two 
[truncating  and  guarding  rivers  are  to  be  marked  on  your 
I  map  of  Europe  with  supreme  clearness :  the  Vistula,  with 
j  Warsaw  astride  of  it  half  way  down,  and  embouchure  in 
I  Baltic, — the  Dniester,  in  Euxine,  flowing  each  of  them, 
j  measured  arrow  straight,   as  far   as  from   Edinburgh  to 
i  London, — with  windings,"^  the  Vistula  six  hundred  miles, 
I  and  the  Dniester  five — count  them  together  for  a  thousand 
I  miles  of  moat,^  between  Europe  and  the  Desert,  reaching 
from  Dantzic  to  Odessa. 

11.  Having  got  your  Europe  moated  off  into  this 
manageable  and  comprehensible  space,  you  are  next  to  fix 
the  limits  which  divide  the  four  Gothic  countries,  Britain, 

*  Note,  however,  generally  that  the  strength  of  a  river,  cceteris  paribus^ 
is  to  be  estimated  by  its  straight  course,  windings  being  almost  always 
caused  by  flats  in  which  it  can  receive  no  tributaries. 


^  [See  "Candida  Casa,"  §  22  (below,  p.  221),  where  Ruskin  again  refers  to  the 
Vi3tula  and  Dniester  as  ''the  two  moat  rivers  of  Europe."] 


92 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


Gaul,  Germany,  and  Dacia,  from  the  four  classic  countries, 
Spain,  Italy,  Greece,  and  Lydia. 

There  is  no  other  generally  opponent  term  to  "  Gothic " 
but  Classic " :  and  I  am  content  to  use  it  for  the  sake 
of  practical  breadth  and  clearness,  though  its  precise  mean- 
ing for  a  little  while  remain  unascertained.  Only  get  the 
geography  well  into  your  mind,  and  the  nomenclature  will 
settle  itself  at  its  leisure. 

12.  Broadly,  then,  you  have  sea  between  Britain  and 
Spain — Pyrenees  between  Gaul  and  Spain — Alps  between 
Germany  and  Italy — Danube  between  Dacia  and  Greece. 
You  must  consider  everything  south  of  the  Danube  as 
Greek,  variously  influenced  from  Athens  on  one  side,  Byzan- 
tium on  the  other:  then,  across  the  ^Egean,  you  have 
the  great  country  absurdly  called  Asia  Minor,  (for  we 
might  just  as  well  call  Greece,  Europe  Minor,  or  Cornwall, 
England  Minor,)  but  which  is  properly  to  be  remembered 
as  "  Lydia,"  the  country  which  infects  with  passion,  and 
tempts  with  wealth ;  which  taught  the  Lydian  measure  in 
music,  and  softened  the  Greek  language  on  its  border 
into  Ionic ;  which  gave  to  ancient  history  the  tale  of  Troy, 
and  to  Christian  history,  the  glow,  and  the  decline,  of  the 
Seven  Churches.^ 

13.  Opposite  to  these  four  countries  in  the  south,  but 
separated  from  them  either  by  sea  or  desert,  are  other  four, 
as  easily  remembered — ^Morocco,  Libya,  Egypt,  and  Arabia. 

Morocco,  virtually  consisting  of  the  chain  of  Atlas  and 
the  coasts  depending  on  it,  may  be  most  conveniently 
thought  of  as  including  the  modern  Morocco  and  Algeria, 
with  the  Canaries  as  a  dependent  group  of  islands. 

Libya,  in  like  manner,  will  include  the  modern  Tunis 
and  Tripoli :  it  will  begin  on  the  west  with  St.  Augustine's 
town  of  Hippo ;  and  its  coast  is  colonized  from  Tyre  and 
Greece,  dividing  it  into  the  two  districts  of  Carthage  and 
Cyrene.    Egypt,  the  country  of  the  River,  and  Arabia,  the 

^  [For  Ruskiii's  study  of  the  Seven  Churches,  see  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  84 
(Vol.  XXIX.  pp.  298  seq.).] 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


98 


country  of  no  River,  are  to  be  thought  of  as  the  two 
great  southern  powers  of  separate  Religion. 

14.  You  have  thus,  easily  and  clearly  memorable,  twelve 
countries,  distinct  evermore  by  natural  laws,  and  forming 
three  zones  from  north  to  south,  all  healthily  habitable — 
but  the  races  of  the  northern-most,  disciplined  in  endur- 
ance of  cold ;  those  of  the  central  zone,  perfected  by  the 
enjoyable  suns  alike  of  summer  and  winter ;  those  of  the 
southern  zone,  trained  to  endurance  of  heat.  Writing  them 
now  in  tabular  view, 

Britain  Gaul  Germany  Dacia 

Spain  Italy  Greece  Lydia 

Morocco        Libya  Egypt  Arabia, 

you  have  the  ground  of  all  useful  profane  history  mapped 
out  in  the  simplest  terms ;  and  then,  as  the  fount  of  inspira- 
tion, for  all  these  countries,  with  the  strength  which  every 
soul,  that  has  possessed,  has  held  sacred  and  supernatural, 
you  have  last  to  conceive  perfectly  the  small  hill  district 
of  the  Holy  Land,  with  Philistia  and  Syria  on  its  flanks, 
both  of  them  chastising  forces :  but  Syria,  in  the  beginning, 
herself  the  origin  of  the  chosen  race — A  Syrian  ready 
to  perish  was  my  father"^ — and  the  Syrian  Rachel  being 
thought  of  always  as  the  true  mother  of  Israel. 

15.  And  remember,  in  all  future  study  of  the  relations 
of  these  countries,  you  must  never  allow  your  mind  to  be 
disturbed  by  the  accidental  changes  of  political  limit.  No 
matter  who  rules  a  country,  no  matter  what  it  is  officially 
called,  or  how  it  is  formally  divided,  eternal  bars  and  doors 
are  set  to  it  by  the  mountains  and  seas,  eternal  laws 
enforced  over  it  by  the  clouds  and  stars.  The  people  that 
are  born  on  it  are  its  people,  be  they  a  thousand  times 
again  and  again  conquered,  exiled,  or  captive.  The  stranger 
cannot  be  its  king,  the  invader  cannot  be  its  possessor; 
and,  although  just  laws,  maintained  whether  by  the  people 
or  their  conquerors,  have  always  the  appointed  good  and 

^  [Deuteronomy  xxvi.  5.] 


94 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


strength  of  justice,  nothing  is  permanently  helpful  to  any 
race  or  condition  of  men  but  the  spirit  that  is  in  their 
own  hearts,  kindled  by  the  love  of  their  native  land. 

16.  Of  course,  in  saying  that  the  invader  cannot  be  the 
possessor  of  any  country,  I  speak  only  of  invasion  such  as 
that  by  the  Vandals  of  Libya,  or  by  ourselves  of  India; 
where  the  conquering  race  does  not  become  permanently 
inhabitant.  You  are  not  to  call  Libya  Vandalia,  nor  India 
England,  because  these  countries  are  temporarily  under  the 
rule  of  Vandals  and  English  ;  neither  Italy  Gothland  under 
Ostrogoths,  nor  England  Denmark  under  Canute.  National 
character  varies  as  it  fades  under  invasion  or  in  corruption; 
but  if  ever  it  glows  again  into  a  new  life,  that  life  must 
be  tempered  by  the  earth  and  sky  of  the  country  itself. 
Of  the  twelve  names  of  countries  now  given  in  their  order, 
only  one  v/ill  be  changed  as  we  advance  in  our  history; 
— Gaul  will  properly  become  France  when  the  Franks 
become  her  abiding  inhabitants.  The  other  eleven  primary 
names  will  serve  us  to  the  end. 

17.  With  a  moment's  more  patience,  therefore,  glancing 
to  the  far  East,  we  shall  have  laid  the  foundations  of  all 
our  own  needful  geography.  As  the  northern  kingdoms 
are  moated  from  the  Scythian  desert  by  the  Vistula,  so  the 
southern  are  moated  from  the  dynasties  properly  called 
"Oriental"  by  the  Euphrates;  which,  ''partly  sunk  beneath 
the  Persian  Gulf,  reaches  from  the  shores  of  Beloochistan 
and  Oman  to  the  mountains  of  Armenia,  and  forms  a  huge 
hot-air  funnel,  the  base"  (or  mouth)  ''of  which  is  on  the 
tropics,  while  its  extremity  reaches  thirty-seven  degrees  of 
northern  latitude.  Hence  it  comes  that  the  Semoom  itself 
(the  specific  and  gaseous  Semoom)  pays  occasional  visits  to 
Mosoul  and  Djezeerat  Omer,  while  the  thermometer  at 
Bagdad  attains  in  summer  an  elevation  capable  of  stagger- 
ing the  belief  of  even  an  old  Indian."  ^ 

18.  This  valley  in  ancient  days  formed  the  kingdom  of 

*  W.  G.  Palgrave,  Arabia,  vol.  ii.  p.  155.  I  gratefully  adopt  in  the  next 
paragraph  his  division  of  Asiatic  nations,  p.  l60. 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


95 


Assyria,  as  the  valley  of  the  Nile  formed  that  of  Egypt. 

the  work  now  before  us,  we  have  nothing  to  do  with 
ts  people,  who  were  to  the  Jews  merely  a  hostile  power 
)f  captivity,  inexorable  as  the  clay  of  their  walls,  or  the 
tone  of  their  statues;  and,  after  the  birth  of  Christ,  the 
narshy  valley  is  no  more  than  a  field  of  battle  between 
^est  and  East.  Beyond  the  great  river, — Persia,  India, 
md  China,  form  the  southern  "  Oriens."  Persia  is  properly 
0  be  conceived  as  reaching  from  the  Persian  Gulf  to  the 
nountain  chains  which  flank  and  feed  the  Indus ;  and  is  the 
rue  vital  power  of  the  East  in  the  days  of  Marathon :  but 
t  has  no  influence  on  Christian  history  except  through 
Irabia ;  while,  of  the  northern  Asiatic  tribes,  Mede,  Bactrian, 
^arthian,  and  Scythian,  changing  into  Turk  and  Tartar, 
ve  need  take  no  heed  until  they  invade  us  in  our  own 
listoric  territory. 

19.  Using  therefore  the  terms  "  Gothic "  and  "  Classic  " 
or  broad  distinction  of  the  northern  and  central  zones  of 
his  our  own  territory,  we  may  conveniently  also  use  the 
vord  "  Arab'"^  for  the  whole  southern  zone.  The  influence 
)f  Egypt  vanishes  soon  after  the  fourth  century,  while 
hat  of  Arabia,  powerful  from  the  beginning,  rises  in  the 
ixth  into  an  empire  whose  end  we  have  not  seen.t  And 
^ou  may  most  rightly  conceive  the  religious  principle  which 
s  the  base  of  that  empire,  by  remembering,  that  while 
he  Jews  forfeited  their  prophetic  power  by  taking  up  the 
)rofession  of  usury  over  the  whole  earth,  the  Arabs  returned 
o  the  simplicity  of  prophecy  in  its  beginning  by  the  well 

*  Gibbon's  fifty-sixth  chapter  begins  with  a  sentence  which  may  be 
aken  as  the  epitome  of  the  entire  history  we  have  to  investigate :  "  The 
hree  great  nations  of  the  world,  the  Greeks,  the  Saracens,  and  the  Franks, 
ncountered  each  other  on  the  theatre  of  Italy."  I  use  the  more  general 
i^ord,  Goths,  instead  of  Franks ;  and  the  more  accurate  word,  Arab,  for 
iaracen;  but  otherwise,  the  reader  will  observe  that  the  division  is  the 
ame  as  mine.  Gibbon  does  not  recognize  the  Roman  people  as  a  nation 
-but  only  the  Roman  power  as  an  empire. 

t  Recent  events  have  shown  the  force  of  these  words.  (Note  on  revision, 
lay,  1885.)! 


^  [ITie  reference  is  to  the  Mahdi  and  the  death  of  General  Gordon.] 


96 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


of  Hagar/  and  are  not  opponents  to  Christianity;  but  only 
to  the  faults  or  follies  of  Christians.  They  keep  still  their 
faith  in  the  one  God  who  spoke  to  Abraham  their  father; 
and  are  His  children  in  that  simplicity,  far  more  truly  than 
the  nominal  Christians  who  lived,  and  live,  only  to  dispute 
in  vociferous  council,  or  in  frantic  schism,  the  relations  of 
the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost. 

20.  Trusting  my  reader  then  in  future  to  retain  in  his 
mind  without  confusion  the  idea  of  the  three  zones,  Gothic, 
Classic,  and  Arab,  each  divided  into  four  countries,  clearly 
recognizable  through  all  ages  of  remote  or  recent  history ;- 
— I  must  farther,  at  once,  simplify  for  him  the  idea  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  (see  note  to  last  paragraph,)  in  the 
manner  of  its  affecting  them.    Its  nominal  extent,  temporary 

1  [See  Genesis  xxi.  17-20.  Ruskin  refers  to  the  tradition  of  Mahomet's  first 
vision,  in  which  the  angel  Gabriel  called  him  to  be  a  prophet.  What  Ruskin 
here  says  about  the  relations  of  Mahometanism  and  early  Christianity  is  illustrated 
by  ch.  viii.  ("Mahometanism  in  its  Relations  to  the  Eastern  Church")  in  Deau 
Stanley's  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Eastern  Church.] 

"  [Among  some  matter  set  up  in  type  for  future  parts  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told 
Us  is  the  following  passage  : — 

"I  have  asked  the  reader  to  hold  firmly  the  conception  of  the  great 
division^  by  climate,  of  the  wandering  Gothic  nations  from  those  of  the 
resident  races  in  temperate  England,  France,  Germany,  and  Dacia.  Aud 
the  ways  in  which  both  these  Northern  zones  of  human  intelligence  accept 
the  doctrines  and  endeavour  the  practice  of  Christianity  are  to  be  studied 
as  the  elForts  of  scholars,  placed  at  no  ordinary  disadvantage,  to  comply 
with  the  dem^ands  of  duty  never  before  recognized,  and  rise  to  the  com- 
pleteness of  a  rational  theology  out  of  the  confused  terrors  and  symbols 
of  merely  natural  superstition. 

("I  do  not  know  if  1  have  ever  before  permitted  myself  this  vaguely 
injurious  word,  used  by  religious  writers  habitually  of  every  religion  but 
their  own,  and  by  infidel  writers  of  every  motion  they  feel  on  any  subject 
unconnected  with  the  stomach  or  the  pocket. 

"The  proper  meaning  of  superstition '  is  a  belief  in  any  supernatural 
law,  or  person,  which  is  not  based  either  on  reason  or  experience.  It  is 
quite  probable  that  the  reason  may  be  feeble,  and  the  experience  narrow ; 
but  the  deliberate  and  watchful  appeal  to  either  separates  the  subsequent 
conviction  from  the  host  of  traditionary  or  imaginary  impressions  which 
in  all  lands  confuse,  terrify,  or  inflame  the  minds  of  common  devotees. 

"  Spiritual  vision,  if  actual,  whether  in  dreams,  disease,  or  enthusiasti- 
cally exalted  health,  is  always  to  be  held  as  real  experience, — whether  it 
be  deceived  or  not.  Homer  describes,  and  Plato  assumes,  a  religion  of 
clear  and  consistent  vision.  The  wisest  men  who  have  accepted  Chris- 
tianity have  received  it  on  the  evidence  of  men  who  asserted  that  they 
had  seen  Christ  after  He  rose  from  the  dead.  The  reason  has  full  power 
in  both  Homer  and  Dante.  And  the  evidence  they  receive  is  the  best 
attainable  by  them  on  their  subjects  of  doubt.  Both  are  therefore  in  the 
purest  sense  religious,  not  superstitious.    Over  inferior  minds,  less  rational 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


97 


conquests,  civil  dissensions,  or  internal  vices,  are  scarcely  of 
my  historical  moment  at  all;  the  real  Empire  is  efFec- 
:ual  only  as  an  exponent  of  just  law,  military  order,  and 
nechanical  art,  to  untrained  races,  and  as  a  translation  of 
jreek  thought  into  less  diffused  and  more  tenable  scheme 
br  them.    The  Classic  zone,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end 
)f  its  visible  authority,  is  composed  of  these  two  elements 
—Greek  imagination,  w^ith  Roman  order:  and  the  divisions 
)r  dislocations  of  the  third  and  fourth  century  are  merely 
he  natural  apparitions  of  their  differences,  when  the  political 
ystem  which  concealed  them  was  tested  by  Christianity, 
t  seems  almost  wholly  lost  sight  of  by  ordinary  historians, 
hat  in  the  wars  of  the  last  Romans  with  the  Goths  the 
:reat  Gothic  captains  were  all  Christians ;  and  that  the 
igorous  and  naive  form  which  the  dawning  faith  took  in 
heir  minds  is  a  more  important  subject  of  investigation, 

fears  and  less  tested  ideals  mingle  continually  with  what  is  rightly  tenable 
in  their  creeds,  and  may  always  be  forgiven  to  gentleness  and  sometimes 
admired  by  sympathy  :  incapability  of  them  is  always  vulgar,  and  scorn 
of  them  always  insolent.) 

''But  there  remains  a  third  zone  of  Europe,  consisting  of  its  southern 
peninsulas,  warmed  by  the  winds  and  glowing  with  the  reflected  passion, 
or  thought,  of  the  opposite  coasts  of  Atlas,  Libya,  and  Egypt. 

''To  this  narrow  zone, — and,  if  measured  on  the  world's  circumference, 
this  curt  one, — the  district  of  the  olive,  the  vine,  the  orange,  and  the 
peach,  all  the  most  gracious  gifts  of  Nature  have  been  granted  ;  and  under 
their  influence,  the  highest  powers  and  imaginations  of  humanity  born 
and  trained. 

"  From  these  coasts  of  tideless  and  never  frozen  sea,  these  mountains 
of  marble  vein  and  golden  stream, — these  plains  of  dazzling  garden  and 
fragrant  grove,  all  the  sentiments  that  exalt  and  luxuries  that  prolong 
the  life  of  man  have  been  dilfused  through  the  Arctic  gloom  and  starving 
wrath  of  the  northern  nation  :  and  in  the  kindness  of  a  Heaven  which 
permitted  new  beauty  in  every  changing  season  of  earth,  the  faith  of  man 
foretold  a  spring  which  should  burst  from  the  sleep,  and  bloom  beyond 
the  winter,  of  his  soul. 

"Then,  lastly,  there  is  the  Libyan  zone  itself,  torrid  Christendom  : 
whose  influence  is  to  be  thought  of,  throughout  all  records  of  it,  as  far 
more  that  of  pure  heat  and  light,  than  of  race.  Carthaginian,  Cyrenian, 
Egyptian ;  the  pillars  of  Atlas,  of  Hercules  ;  Dido  and  Cleopatra,  St. 
Augustine  and  the  Bishop  of  Carthage  in  Genseric's  time  ;  colonizing 
Tyrian,  colonizing  Vandal,  colonizing  Arab ;  native  Moor,  native  Lion 
and  Asp ; — how  will  you  get  any  tenable  first  image  of  all  this,  afterwards 
to  be  more  subtly  divided  by  the  differences  between  torrid  saints  and 
torrid  sinners,  cool  saints  and  cool  sinners,  the  fat  and  lean  kine  of 
preachers,  the  fat  and  lean  kine  of  congregations  to  be  preached  at?" 
)r  the  bishop  in  Genseric's  time,  see  Milman's  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  i. 
243  (small  ed.).] 

XXXIII.  G 


98 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


by  far,  than  the  inevitable  wars  which  followed  the  retire- 
ment of  Diocletian,  or  the  confused  schisms  and  crimes  of 
the  lascivious  court  of  Constantine.  I  am  compelled,  how- 
ever, to  notice  the  terms  in  which  the  last  arbitrary  dis- 
solutions of  the  empire  took  place,  that  they  may  illustrate, 
instead  of  confusing,  the  arrangement  of  the  nations  which 
I  would  fasten  in  your  memory. 

21.  In  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  you  have, 
politically,  what  Gibbon  calls  "  the  final  division  of  the 
Eastern  and  Western  Empires''^  This  really  means  only 
that  the  Emperor  Valentinian,  yielding,  though  not  with- 
out hesitation,  to  the  feeling  now  confirmed  in  the  legions 
that  the  Empire  was  too  vast  to  be  held  by  a  single 
person,  takes  his  brother  for  his  colleague,  and  divides,  not, 
truly  speaking,  their  authority,  but  their  attention,  between 
the  east  and  the  west.  To  his  brother  Valens  he  assigns 
the  extremely  vague  "Prasfecture  of  the  East,  from  the 
lower  Danube  to  the  confines  of  Persia,"  while  for  his  own 
immediate  government  he  reserves  the  "  warlike  pr^efectures 
of  lUyricum,  Italy,  and  Gaul,  from  the  extremity  of  Greece 
to  the  Caledonian  rampart,  and  from  the  rampart  of  Cale- 
donia to  the  foot  of  Mount  Atlas."  That  is  to  say,  in 
less  poetical  cadence,  (Gibbon  had  better  have  put  hi^ 
history  into  hexameters  at  once,)  Valentinian  kept  undei 
his  own  watch  the  whole  of  Roman  Europe  and  Africa, 
and  left  Lydia  and  Caucasus  to  his  brother.  Lydia  and 
Caucasus  never  did,  and  never  could,  form  an  Easterr 
Empire, — they  were  merely  outside  dependencies,  useful  foi 
taxation  in  peace,  dangerous  by  their  multitudes  in  war 
There  never  was,  from  the  seventh  century  before  Christ 
to  the  seventh  after  Christ,  but  one  Roman  Empire,  which 
meant — the  power  over  humanity  of  such  men  as  Cincin 
natus  and  Agricola ;  ^  it  expires  as  the  race  and  temper  o 
these  expire;  the  nominal  extent  of  it,  or  brilliancy  at  an) 
moment,  is  no  more  than  the  reflection,  farther  or  nearei 

^  [Chapter  xxv.] 

2  [For  similar  references  to  Cincinnatus,  see  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  54,  §  li 
(Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  352  7..);  to  Agricola,  see  below,  pp.  211,  427,  432.] 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


99 


upon  the  clouds,  of  the  flames  of  an  altar  whose  fuel  was 
of  noble  souls.  There  is  no  true  date  for  its  division; 
there  is  none  for  its  destruction.  Whether  Dacian  Probus 
or  Noric  Odoacer  be  on  the  throne  of  it,  the  force  of  its 
living  principle  alone  is  to  be  watched — remaining,  in  arts, 
in  laws,  and  in  habits  of  thought,  dominant  still  in  Europe 
down  to  the  twelfth  century; — in  language  and  example, 
dominant  over  all  educated  men  to  this  hour. 

22.  But  in  the  nominal  division  of  it  by  Valentinian, 
let  us  note  Gibbon's  definition  (I  assume  it  to  be  his,  not 
the  Emperor's)  of  European  Roman  Empire  into  "  lUyri- 
eum,  Italy,  and  Gaul."  I  have  already  said  you  must  hold 
everything  south  of  the  Danube  for  Greek.  The  two  chief 
districts  immediately  south  of  the  stream  are  upper  and 
lower  Moesia,  consisting  of  the  slope  of  the  Thracian  moun- 
tains northward  to  the  river,  with  the  plains  between  it  and 
them.  This  district  you  must  notice  for  its  importance  in 
forming  the  Mceso-Gothic  alphabet,  in  which  the  "  Greek 
is  by  far  the  principal  element,'"''  giving  sixteen  letters  out 
of  the  twenty-four.  The  Gothic  invasion  under  the  reign 
of  Valens  is  the  first  that  establishes  a  Teutonic  nation 
within  the  frontier  of  the  empire;  but  they  only  thereby 
bring  themselves  more  directly  under  its  spiritual  power. 
Their  bishop,  Ulphilas,  adopts  this  Moesian  alphabet,  two- 
thirds  Greek,  for  his  translation  of  the  Bible,  and  it  is 
universally  disseminated  and  perpetuated  by  that  translation, 
until  the  extinction  or  absorption  of  the  Gothic  race. 

23.  South  of  the  Thracian  mountains  you  have  Thrace 
herself,  and  the  countries  confusedly  called  Dalmatia  and 
Illyria,  forming  the  coast  of  the  Adriatic,  and  reaching 
inwards  and  eastwards  to  the  mountain  watershed.  I  have 
never  been  able  to  form  a  clear  notion  myself  of  the  real 
character  of  the  people  of  these  districts,  in  any  given 
period;  but  they  are  all  to  be  massed  together  as  northern 

*  Milman,  Hist,  of  Christianity,  vol.  iii.  p.  S6} 


^  [Ruskin's  references  are  to  the  octavo  edition ;  Book  iii.  ch.  vii.  (vol.  iii. 
55  in  the  small  edition).] 


100 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


Greek,  having  more  or  less  of  Greek  blood  and  dialect 
according  to  their  nearness  to  Greece  proper  ;  though  neither 
sharing  in  her  philosophy,  nor  submitting  to  her  discipline. 
But  it  is  of  course  far  more  accurate,  in  broad  terms,  to 
speak  of  these  Illyrian,  Moesian,  and  Macedonian  districts 
as  all  Greek,  than  with  Gibbon  or  Valentinian  to  speak  of 
Greece  and  Macedonia  as  all  Illyrian.'^ 

24).  In  the  same  imperial  or  poetical  generalization,  we 
find  England  massed  with  France  under  the  term  Gaul, 
and  bounded  by  the  "  Caledonian  rampart."  Whereas  in 
our  own  division,  Caledonia,  Hibernia,  and  Wales,  are  from 
the  first  considered  as  essential  parts  of  Britain,t  and  the 
link  with  the  continent  is  to  be  conceived  as  formed  by 
the  settlement  of  Britons  in  Brittany,  and  not  at  all  by 
Roman  authority  beyond  the  Humber. 

25.  Thus,  then,  once  more  reviewing  our  order  of 
countries,  and  noting  only  that  the  British  Islands,  though 
for  the  most  part  thrown  by  measured  degree  much  north 
of  the  rest  of  the  north  zone,  are  brought  by  the  influence 
of  the  Gulf  Stream  into  the  same  climate ; — you  have,  at 
the  time  when  our  history  of  Christianity  begins,  the  Gothic 
zone  yet  unconverted,  and  having  not  yet  even  heard  of 
the  new  faith.  You  have  the  Classic  zone  variously  and 
increasingly  conscious  of  it,  disputing  with  it,  striving  to 

*  I  find  the  same  generalization  expressed  to  the  modern  student 
under  the  term  Balkan  Peninsula,"  extinguishing  every  ray  and  trace  of 
past  history  at  once. 

f  Gibbon's  more  deliberate  statement  is  clear  enough.  "From  the 
coast  or  the  extremity  of  Caithness  and  Ulster,  the  memory  of  Celtic 
origin  was  distinctly  preserved  in  the  perpetual  resemblance  of  languages, 
religion,  and  manners,  and  the  peculiar  character  of  the  British  tribes 
might  be  naturally  ascribed  to  the  influence  of  accidental  and  local  circum- 
stances." The  Lowland  Scots,  "wheat-eaters"  or  W^anderers,  and  the 
Irish,  are  very  positively  identified  by  Gibbon  at  the  time  our  own  his- 
tory begins.  It  is  certain  "  (italics  his,  not  mine)  that  in  the  declining 
age  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Caledonia,  Ireland,  and  the  Isle  of  Man,  were 
inhabited  by  the  Scots."— Chap.  25,  vol.  iv.  p.  279.  | 

The  higher  civilization  and  feebler  courage  of  the  Lowland  English  ren- 
dered them  either  the  victims  of  Scotland,  or  the  grateful  subjects  of  Rome. 
The  mountaineers,  Pict  among  the  Grampians,  or  of  their  own  colour 
in  Cornwall  and  Wales,  have  never  been  either  instructed  or  subdued,  and 
remain  to  this  day  the  artless  and  fearless  strength  of  the  British  race. 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


101 


extinguish  it — and  your  Arab  zone,  the  ground  and  susten- 
ance of  it,  encompassing  the  Holy  Land  with  the  warmth 
of  its  own  wings,  and  cherishing  there — embers  of  phoenix 
fire  over  all  the  earth — the  hope  of  Resurrection.^ 

26.  What  would  have  been  the  course,  or  issue,  of 
Christianity,  had  it  been  orally  preached  only,  and  unsup- 
ported by  its  poetical  literature,  might  be  the  subject  of 
deeply  instructive  speculation — if  a  historian's  duty  were  to 
reflect  instead  of  record.  The  power  of  the  Christian  faith 
was  however,  in  the  fact  of  it,  always  founded  on  the 
written  prophecies  and  histories  of  the  Bible ;  and  on  the 
interpretations  of  their  meaning,  given  by  the  example,  far 
more  than  by  the  precept,  of  the  great  monastic  orders. 
The  poetry  and  history  of  the  Syrian  Testaments  were  given 
to  the  Latin  Church  by  St.  Jerome,  while  the  virtue  and 
efficiency  of  monastic  life  are  summed  in  the  rule  of  St. 
Benedict.  To  understand  the  relation  of  the  work  of  these 
two  men  to  the  general  order  of  the  Church  is  quite  the 
first  requirement  for  its  farther  intelligible  history. 

Gibbon's  thirty-seventh  chapter  professes  to  give  an 
account  of  the  "  Institution  of  the  Monastic  Life "  in  the 
third  century.  But  the  monastic  life  had  been  instituted 
somewhat  earlier,  and  by  many  prophets  and  kings.^  By 
Jacob,  when  he  laid  the  stone  for  his  pillow;^  by  Moses, 
when  he  drew  aside  to  see  the  burning  bush;  by  David, 
before  he  had  left  "  those  few  sheep  in  the  wilderness " ; 
and  by  the  prophet  who  "was  in  the  deserts  till  the  time 
of  his  showing  unto  Israel."  Its  primary  institution,"  for 
Europe,  was  Numa's,  in  that  of  the  Vestal  Virgins,  and 
College  of  Augurs ;  *  founded  on  the  originally  Etrurian 

1  [Compare  Art  of  England,  §  15  (below,  p.  276).] 

^  [On  the  subject  of  monasticism,  see  further  pp.  195-196,  228  seq. ;  and 
compare  Ethics  of  the  Dust,  §§  81-85  (Vol.  XVIII.  pp.  302-307),  and  Presterita,  iii. 
ch.  i.  With  the  gloomier  forms  of  Catholic  asceticism  Ruskin  meant  to  deal  in 
later  Parts  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us  (see  Vol.  XXV.  p.  464  n.).] 

^  [Genesis  xxviii.  11.  For  the  other  Bible  references  in  this  paragraph,  see 
Exodus  iii.  3  ;  1  Samuel  xvii.  28 ;  Luke  i.  80.] 

*  [See  Livy,  Book  i.  For  another  reference  to  the  institutions  of  Numa,  see 
below,  p.  200*,  and  Fors  Clavigern,  Letter  68  (Vol  XXVIII,  p.  667).  The  Religion 
of  Numa  is  the  subject  of  a  book  by  J.  B.  Carter  (1906).] 


102 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


and  derived  Roman  conception  of  pure  life  dedicate  to  the 
service  of  God,  and  practical  wisdom  dependent  on  His 
guidance."^ 

The  form  which  the  monastic  spirit  took  in  later  times 
depended  far  more  on  the  corruption  of  the  common  world, 
from  which  it  was  forced  to  recoil  either  in  indignation  or 
terror,  than  on  any  change  brought  about  by  Christianity 
in  the  ideal  of  human  virtue  and  happiness. 

27.  "  Egypt,"  (Mr.  Gibbon  thus  begins  to  account  for 
the  new  Institution !)  "  the  fruitful  parent  of  superstition, 
afforded  the  first  example  of  monastic  life."  Egypt  had 
her  superstitions,  like  other  countries;  but  was  so  little 
the  parent  of  superstition  that  perhaps  no  faith  among  the 
imaginative  races  of  the  world  has  been  so  feebly  missionary 
as  hers.  She  never  prevailed  on  even  the  nearest  of  her 
neighbours  to  worship  cats  or  cobras  with  her;  and  I  am 
alone,  to  my  belief,  among  recent  scholars,  in  maintaining 
Herodotus'  statement  of  her  influence  on  the  archaic  theo- 
logy of  Greece.^  But  that  influence,  if  any,  was  formative 
and  delineative;  not  ritual:  so  that  in  no  case,  and  in  no 
country,  was  Egypt  the  parent  of  Superstition:  while  she 
was  beyond  all  dispute,  for  all  people  and  to  all  time,  the 
parent  of  Geometry,  Astronomy,  Architecture,  and  Chiv- 
alry. She  was,  in  its  material  and  technic  elements,  the 
mistress  of  Literature,^  showing  authors  who  before  could 
only  scratch  on  wax  and  wood,  how  to  weave  paper  and 
engrave  porphyry.    She  was  the  first  exponent  of  the  law 

*  I  should  myself  mark  as  the  fatallest  instant  in  the  decline  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  Julian's  rejection  of  the  counsel  of  the  Augurs.  ''For 
the  last  time,  the  Etruscan  Haruspices  accompanied  a  Roman  Emperor, 
but  by  a  singular  fatality  their  adverse  interpretation  of  the  signs  of 
heaven  was  disdained,  and  Julian  followed  the  advice  of  the  philosophers, 
who  coloured  their  predictions  with  the  bright  hues  of  the  Emperor's 
ambition."    (Milman,  Hist,  of  Christianity^  chap,  vi.^) 

^  [See  Herodotus,  ii.  50-58.  Compare  Queen  of  the  Air,  §  25  (Vol.  XIX. 
p.  319  n.).    See  also  Vol.  XVIII.  pp.  364,  461.] 

^  [For  the  Egyptian  as  ''the  scribe  of  scribes"  and  as  the  "tutress  of  Moses," 
etc.,  see  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  64  (Vol.  XXVIII.  pp.  563,  568).] 

^  [Ch.  vi.  of  Book  iii.  (vol.  iii.  p.  26,  small  ed.).  The  reference  is  to  the 
Emperor's  campaign  against  Persia,  in  which  he  lost  his  life.] 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


103 


I  )f  Judgment  after  Death  for  Sin.    She  was  the  Tutress  of 

I  Moses;  and  the  Hostess  of  Christ. 

28.  It  is  both  probable  and  natural  that,  in  such  a 

I  30untry,  the  disciples  of  any  new  spiritual  doctrine  should 

i  mng  it  to  closer  trial  than  was  possible  among  the  illiterate 
ivarriors,  or  in  the  storm-vexed  solitudes  of  the  North;  yet 

I  t  is  a  thoughtless  error  to  deduce  the  subsequent  power 
)f  cloistered  fraternity  from  the  lonely  passions  of  Egyptian 
nonachism.    The  anchorites  of  the   first  three  centuries 

i  /anish  like  feverish  spectres,  when  the  rational,  merciful, 

I  ind  laborious  laws  of  Christian  societies  are  established; 

i  ind  the  clearly  recognizable  rewards  of  heavenly  solitude 

!  ire  granted  to  those  only  who  seek  the  Desert  for  its 

I  *edemption.^ 

i       29.  "The  clearly  recognizable  rewards,"  I  repeat,  and 

1  ivith  cautious  emphasis.     No  man  has  any  data  for  esti- 

I  Hating,  far  less  right  of  judging,  the  results  of  a  life  of 

i  resolute  self-denial,  until  he  has  had  the  courage  to  try  it 

it  [limself,  at  least  for  a  time:  but  I  believe  no  reasonable 

J!  person  will  wish,  and  no  honest  person  dare,  to  deny  the 

i!  benefits  he  has  occasionally  felt  both  in  mind  and  body, 

j  iuring  periods   of  accidental  privation  from   luxury,  or 

I  exposure  to  danger.    The  extreme  vanity  of  the  modern 

I  Englishman  in  making  a  momentary  Stylites  of  himself 

I  on  the  top  of  a  Horn  or  an  Aiguille,^  and  his  occasional 

I  confession  of  a  charm  in  the  solitude  of  the  rocks,  of 

1  which  he  modifies  nevertheless  the  poignancy  with  his 

^  pocket  newspaper,  and  from  the  prolongation  of  which  he 

,[  thankfully  escapes  to  the  nearest  table-d'hote,  ought  to 

f  make  us  less  scornful  of  the  pride,  and  more  intelligent  of 

"i  the  passion,  in  which  the  mountain  anchorites  of  Arabia 

It,  and  Palestine  condemned  themselves  to  lives  of  seclusion 

*  Even  the  best  Catholic  historians  are  too  commonly  blind  to  the 
^   iinviolable  connection  of  monastic  virtue  with  the  Benedictine  law  of  agri- 
icultural  labour.    (Note  on  revision,  1885.) 


^  [For  Raskin's  views  on  this  subject,  see  Vol.  XVI.  p.  138  n.] 


104 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


and  suffering,  which  were  comforted  only  by  supernatural 
vision,  or  celestial  hope.  That  phases  of  mental  disease  are 
the  necessary  consequence  of  exaggerated  and  independent 
emotion  of  any  kind  must,  of  course,  be  remembered  in  i 
reading  the  legends  of  the  wilderness ;  but  neither  physicians 
nor  moralists  have  yet  attempted  to  distinguish  the  morbid 
states  of  intellect"^  which  are  extremities  of  noble  passion, 
from  those  which  are  the  punishments  of  ambition,  avarice, 
or  lasciviousness.  | 
30.  Setting  all  questions  of  this  nature  aside  for  the 
moment,  my  younger  readers  need  only  hold  the  broad  fact 
that  during  the  whole  of  the  fourth  century,  multitudes  of 
self-devoted  men  led  lives  of  extreme  misery  and  poverty  in 
the  effort  to  obtain  some  closer  knowledge  of  the  Being  and 
Will  of  God.  We  know,  in  any  available  clearness,  neither 
what  they  suffered,  nor  what  they  learned.  We  cannot  esti- ' 
mate  the  solemnizing  or  reproving  power  of  their  examples 
on  the  less  zealous  Christian  world ;  and  only  God  knows 
how  far  their  prayers  for  it  were  heard,  or  their  persons 

*  Gibbon's  hypothetical  conclusion  respecting  the  effects  of  self-morti- 
fication,  and  his  following  historical  statement,  must  be  noted  as  in  them- 
selves containing  the  entire  views  of  the  modern  philosophies  and  policies 
which  have  since  changed  the  monasteries  of  Italy  into  barracks,  and  the 
churches  of  France  into  magazines.  "This  voluntary  martyrdom  must  have 
gradually  destroyed  the  sensibility,  both  of  mind  and  body;  nor  can  it  he 
presumed  that  the  fanatics  who  torment  themselves,  are  capable  of  any 
lively  affection  for  the  rest  of  mankind.  A  cruel  unfeeling  temper  has  chav' 
acterized  the  monks  of  every  age  and  country.** 

How  much  of  penetration,  or  judgment,  this  sentence  exhibits,  I  hope 
will  become  manifest  to  the  reader  as  I  unfold  before  him  the  actual 
history  of  his  faith ;  but  being,  I  suppose,  myself  one  of  the  last  surviving 
witnesses  of  the  character  of  recluse  life  as  it  still  existed  in  the  begin- 
ning of  this  century,  I  can  point  to  the  portraiture  of  it  given  by  Scott  in 
the  introduction  to  The  Monastery  as  one  perfect  and  trustworthy,  to  the 
letter  and  to  the  spirit ;  ^  and  for  myself  can  say,  that  the  most  gentle, 
refined,  and  in  the  deepest  ?ense  amiable,  phases  of  character  I  have  ever 
known,  have  been  either  those  of  monks,  or  of  domestic  servants  trained 
in  the  Catholic  faith.  (And,  when  I  wrote  this  sentence — I  did  not  know  , 
Miss  Alexander's  Edwige.^ — Note  on  revision,  1885.)  j 


^  [Compare  Appendix  7  to  Fors  Clavigera,  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  539.] 
2  [For  whom  see  the  Index  in  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  835.] 


i 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER  105 

iccepted.  This  only  we  may  observe  with  reverence,  that 
imong  all  their  numbers,  none  seem  to  have  repented  their 
chosen  manner  of  existence;  none  perish  by  melancholy  or 
uicide;  their  self-adjudged  sufferings  are  never  inflicted  in 
:he  hope  of  shortening  the  lives  they  embitter  or  purify; 
md  the  hours  of  dream  or  meditation,  on  mountain  or  in 
;ave,  appear  seldom  to  have  dragged  so  heavily  as  those 
vhich,  without  either  vision  or  reflection,  we  pass  ourselves, 
m  the  embankment  and  in  the  tunnel. 

31.  But  whatever  may  be  alleged,  after  ultimate  and 
lonest  scrutiny,  of  the  follies  or  virtues  of  anchorite  life,  we 
8  ire  unjust  to  Jerome  if  we  think  of  him  as  its  introducer 
nto  the  West  of  Europe.  He  passed  through  it  himself 
IS  a  phase  of  spiritual  discipline ;  but  he  represents,  in  his 
otal  nature  and  final  work,  not  the  vexed  inactivity  of  the 
i  Eremite,  but  the  eager  industry  of  a  benevolent  tutor  and 


)astor.    His  heart  is  in  continual  fervour  of  admiration  or 


I  )f  hope— remaining  to  the  last  as  impetuous  as  a  child's 
)ut  as  affectionate;  and  the  discrepancies  of  Protestant 
)bjection  by  which  his  character  has  been  confused,  or 
loncealed,  may  be  gathered  into  some  dim  picture  of  his 
eal  self  when  once  we  comprehend  the  simplicity  of  his 
aith,  and  sympathise  a  little  with  the  eager  charity  which 
^an  so  easily  be  wounded  into  indignation,  and  is  never 
epressed  by  policy. 

32.  The  slight  trust  which  can  be  placed  in  modern 
eadings  of  him,  as  they  now  stand,  may  be  at  once  proved 
jy  comparing  the  two  passages  in  which   Milman  has 
variously  guessed  at  the  leading  principles  of  his  political 
5  Wduct:— 


"Jerome  began  (!)  and  ended  his  career  as  a  monk  of  Palestine;  he 
ttained,  he  aspired  to^  no  dignity  in  the  Church.  Though  ordained  a 
)resbyter  against  his  will,  he  escaped  the  episcopal  dignity  which  was 
breed  upon  his  distinguished  contemporaries/'  {Historic  of  Christianity, 
3ook  III.i) 

"Jerome  cherished  the  secret  hope,  if  it  was  not  the  avowed  object  of 


»  [Ch.  xi.  ;  vol.  iii.  p.  225  (small  edition).] 


106 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


his  ambition,  to  succeed  Damasus  as  Bishop  of  Rome.  ...  Is  the  rejec-iij 
tion  of  an  aspirant  so  singularly  unfit  for  the  station,  from  his  violent 
passions,  his  insolent  treatment  of  his  adversaries,  his  utter  want  of  self- J ''i 
command,  his  almost  unrivalled  faculty  of  awakening  hatred,  to  be  attri-|^ 
buted  to  the  sagacious  and  intuitive  wisdom  of  Rome  } "    (History  of  Latin 
Christianity,  Book  I.,  chap,  ii.i) 

33.  You  may  observe,  as  an  almost  unexceptional  char-jri 
acter  in  the  "  sagacious  wisdom  "  of  the  Protestant  clerical 
mind,  that  it  instinctively  assumes  the  desire  of  power  and 
place  not  only  to  be  uiiiversal  in  Priesthood,  but  to  bei 
always  purely  selfish  in  the  ground  of  it.    The  idea  thati 
power  might  possibly  be  desired  for  the  sake  of  its  bene-|  ; 
volent  use,  so  far  as  I  remember,  does  not  once  occur  in  I 
the  pages  of  any  ecclesiastical  historian  of  recent  date.  In 
our  own  reading  of  past  ages  we  will,  with  the  reader*sj  ' 
permission,  very  calmly  put  out  of  court  all  accounts  of  i 
"  hopes  cherished  in  secret " ;  and  pay  very  small  attention  ^ 
to  the  reasons  for  mediaeval  conduct  which  appear  logical 
to  the  rationalist,  and  probable  to    the  politician.     Wei  ^ 
concern  ourselves  only  with  what  these  singular  and  fantastic! 
Christians  of  the  past  audibly  said,  and  assuredly  did.        j  ^ 

34.  Jerome's  life  by  no  means     began  as  a  monk  of'  ^ 
Palestine."    Dean  Milman  has  not  explained  to  us  how 
any  man's  could ;  but  Jerome's  childhood,  at  any  rate,  waf 
extremely  other  than  recluse,  or  precociously  religious.  He 
was  born  of  rich  parents  living  on  their  own  estate,  the 

*  The  habit  of  assuming,  for  the  conduct  of  men  of  sense  and  feeling 
motives  intelligible  to  the  foolish,  and  probable  to  the  base,  gains  upor 
every  vulgar  historian,  partly  in  the  ease  of  it,  partly  in  the  pride ;  anc 
it  is  horrible  to  contemplate  the  quantity  of  false  witness  against  theii 
neighbours  which  commonplace  writers  commit,  in  the  mere  rounding  anc 
enforcing  of  their  shallow  sentences.  "  Jerome  admits,  indeed,  with  speciou. 
hut  doubtful  humility^  the  inferiority  of  the  unordained  monk  to  the  ordainec 
priest,"  says  Dean  Milman  in  his  eleventh  chapter,  following  up  his  gratui 
tous  doubt  of  Jerome's  humility  with  no  less  gratuitous  asseveration  of  thi 
ambition  of  his  opponents.  "The  clergy,  no  doubt,  had  the  sagacity  t< 
foresee  the  dangerous  rival  as  to  influence  and  authority,  which  was  rising  ] 
up  in  Christian  society." 


1  [Vol.  i.  pp.  95-96  (small  edition).] 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


107 


lime  of  his  native  town  in  North  lUyria,  Stridon,  per- 
lips  now  softened  into  Strigi,  near  Aquileja.  In  Venetian 
cimate,  at  all  events,  and  in  sight  of  Alps  and  sea.  He 
Id  a  brother  and  sister,  a  kind  grandfather,  and  a  dis- 
reeable  private  tutor,  and  was  a  youth  still  studying 
ammar  at  Julian's  death  in  363. 
35.  A  youth  of  eighteen,  and  well  begun  in  all  institutes 
the  classic  schools;  but,  so  far  from  being  a  monk,  not 
jt  a  Christian; — nor  at  all  disposed  towards  the  severer 
dices  even  of  Roman  life !  or  contemplating  with  aversion 
tie  splendours,  either  worldly  or  sacred,  which  shone  on 
In  in  the  college  days  spent  in  its  Capital  city.  For 

lie  power  and  majesty  of  Paganism  were  still  concentrated  at  Rome ; 
^  deities  of  the  ancient  faith  found  their  last  refuge  in  the  capital 
the  empire.    To  the  stranger,  Rome  still  offered  the  appearance  of  a 
Ij^an  city.    It  contained  one  hundred  and  fifty-two  temples,  and  one  hun- 
did  and  eighty  smaller  chapels  or  shrines,  still  sacred  to  their  tutelary 
( d,  and  used  for  public  worship.    Christianity  had  neither  ventured  to 
uirp  those  few  buildings  which  might  be  converted  to  her  use,  still  less 
II  she  the  power  to  destroy  them.    The  religious  edifices  were  under 
t;  protection  of  the  praefect  of  the  city,  and  the  praefect  was  usually  a 
I^an;  at  all  events  he  would  not  permit  any  breach  of  the  public  peace, 
violation  of  public  property.    Above  all  still  towered  the  Capitol,  in  its 
issailed  and  awful  majesty,  with  its  fifty  temples  or  shrines,  bearing  the 
St  sacred  names  in  the  religious  and  civil  annals  of  Rome,  those  of 
^e,  of  Mars,  of  Janus,  of  Romulus,  of  Caesar,  of  Victory.    Some  years 
er  the  accession  of  Theodosius  to  the  Eastern  empire,  the  sacrifices 
re  still  performed  as  national  rites  at  the  public  cost, — the  pontiffs  made 
r  offerings  in  the  name  of  the  whole  human  race.    The  Pagan  orator  ven- 
es  to  assert  that  the  Emperor  dared  not  to  endanger  the  safety  of  the 
pire  by  their  abolition.    The  Emperor  still  bore  the  title  and  insignia 
the  Supreme  Pontiff;  the  Consuls,  before  they  entered  upon  their  func- 
as,  ascended  the  Capitol ;  the  religious  processions  passed  along  the 
wded  streets,  and  the  people  thronged  to  the  festivals  and  theatres 
^jich  still  formed  part  of  the  Pagan  worship."  * 


I  36.  Here,  Jerome  must  have  heard  of  what  by  all  the 
(iristian  sects  was  held  the  judgment  of  God,  between 
tern  and  their  chief  enemy — the  death  of  the  Emperor 
J  lian.    But  I  have  no  means  of  tracing,  and  will  not 

*  Milman,  History  of  Christianity,  vol.  iii.  p.  l62  [iii.  p.  79,  small  ed.]. 
te  the  sentence  in  italics,  for  it  relates  the  true  origin  of  the  Papacy. 


108 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


conjecture,  the  course  of  his  own  thoughts,  until  the  teno 
of  all  his  life  was  changed  at  his  baptism.  The  candou 
which  lies  at  the  basis  of  his  character  has  given  us  on 
sentence  of  his  own,  respecting  that  change,  which  is  wortl 
some  volumes  of  ordinary  confession.  "I  left,  not  onl; 
parents  and  kindred,  but  the  accustomed  luxuries  of  delicat 
life.''  The  words  throw  full  light  on  what,  to  our  les 
courageous  temper,  seems  the  exaggerated  reading  by  th( 
early  converts  of  Christ's  words  to  them — '*He  that  lovetl 
father  or  mother  more  than  me,  is  not  worthy  of  me." 
Tf^e  are  content  to  leave,  for  much  lower  interests,  eithe 
father  or  mother,  and  do  not  see  the  necessity  of  am 
farther  sacrifice :  we  should  know  more  of  ourselves  and  o 
Christianity  if  we  oftener  sustained  what  St.  Jerome  foum 
the  more  searching  trial.  I  find  scattered  indications  of  con 
tempt  among  his  biographers,  because  he  could  not  resigi 
one  indulgence — that  of  scholarship ;  and  the  usual  sneer: 
at  monkish  ignorance  and  indolence  are  in  his  case  trans 
ferred  to  the  weakness  of  a  pilgrim  who  was  so  luxu 
rious  as  to  carry  his  library  in  his  wallet.  It  is  a  singula 
question  (putting,  as  it  is  the  modern  fashion  to  do,  th( 
idea  of  Providence  wholly  aside),  whether,  but  for  th( 
literary  enthusiasm,  which  was  partly  a  weakness,  of  thi' 
old  man's  character,  the  Bible  would  ever  have  become  th( 
library  of  Europe.^ 

37.  For  that,  observe,  is  the  real  meaning,  in  its  firsi 

1  [Matthew  x.  .'^T.    Compare  Mornings  in  Florence,  §  50  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  345). 

2  [In  some  additional  matter  for  further  Parts  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us 
Ruskin,  it  appears,  intended  to  "  complete  the  too  slight  outline  already  given  o 
the  life  of  St.  Jerome,  in  The  Bible  of  Amiens"  : — 

"  I  may  perhaps  assume  the  reader's  leave  to  recapitulate  the  mail 
points  of  it — that  St.  Jerome  is,  in  the  history  of  the  world's  truest  thought 
the  Lion-tamer  as  distinguished  from  Heracles  and  Samson  the  Lion-slayers 
That  liis  entire  emotional  nature  is  of  eager  and  devoted  affection  to  al 
living  creatures,  and  ftis  intellect,  subtle,  patient,  and  joyful  in  following 
out  the  detail  of  all  useful  truth.  He  retires  to  the  desert,  not  because  hi 
hates  the  world — or  dreads  it — but  because  he  loves  his  books,  cannot  ge 
leave — at  Rome — to  read  them,  and  finds  his  entire  life  at  Rome  mad* 
a  warfare  of  by  its  corrupt  clergy,  who  are  all  united  alike  against  th( 
sincerity  of  his  life — and  its  simplicity,  he  having  already  at  Rome  re 
jected  the  luxury  and  vanity  of  Rome  ;  all  the  more  decisively  because  h( 
felt  how  delightful  they  were  to  him.    I  quote  from  p.  118  of  the  'Lioi 


1 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


109 


])wer,  of  the  word  Bible}  Not  book,  merely;  but  "Biblio- 
leca,"  Treasury  of  Books:  and  it  is,  I  repeat,  a  singular 
(lestion,  how  far,  if  Jerome,  at  the  very  moment  when 
ome,  his  tutress,  ceased  from  her  material  power,  had 
Dt  made  her  language  the  oracle  of  Hebrew  prophecy,  a 
:erature  of  their  own,  and  a  religion  unshadowed  by  the 
rrors  of  the  Mosaic  law,  might  have  developed  itself  in 
le  hearts  of  the  Goth,  the  Frank,  and  the  Saxon,  under 
heodoric,  Clovis,  and  Alfred. 

38.  Fate  had  otherwise  determined,  and  Jerome  was  so 
issive  an  instrument  in  her  hands  that  he  began  the  study 
■  Hebrew  as  a  discipline  only,  and  without  any  concep- 
on  of  the  task  he  was  to  fulfil,^  still  less  of  the  scope  of 
s  fulfilment.  I  could  joyfully  believe  that  the  words  of 
hrist,  "  If  they  hear  not  Moses  and  the  Prophets,  neither 
ill  they  be  persuaded  though  one  rose  from  the  dead,"^ 
ad  haunted  the  spirit  of  the  recluse,  until  he  resolved 
lat  the  voice  of  Moses  and  the  Prophets  should  be  made 
idible  to  the  Churches  of  all  the  earth.  But  so  far  as 
e  have  evidence,  no  such  will  or  hope  exalted  the  quiet 
istincts  of  his  natural  industry;  partly  as  a  scholar's 
^ercise,  partly  as  an  old  man's  recreation,  the  severity  of 
le  Latin  language  was  softened,  like  Venetian  crystal,  by 
le  variable  fire  of  Hebrew  thought;  and  the  "Book  of 

Tamer/  the  sentence  on  which  I  have  now  further  to  enlarge.  [§  36 
here.] 

"  My  first  reason  for  recalling  my  readers'  attention  to  this  passage  is 
that  whether  it  be  thought  boasting  or  confessive,  I  think  it  right  to  say 
St.  Jerome  is  the  only  saint  whom  I  have  entire  sympathy  with,  and 
whom,  in  whatever  the  least  good  there  is  in  me,  I  absolutely  resemble — 
the  terrible  difference  being  in  the  fact  that  while  he  left,  for  his  studies 
in  the  desert,  Roman  luxury  far  away,  I  always  carried  it  with  me,  as 
well  as  my  books,  and  my  chosen  kind  of  desert  was,  the  Hotel  de  Bellevue 
at  Thun,  or  of  the  Cascade  at  the  Giesbach.  But  in  my  way  of  reading, 
'  my  love  of  quiet  (with  certain  reliefs  and  embellishments)  and  my  love 

of  all  loveable  animals,  from  lions  down  to  grasshoppers  and  ants,  St. 
Jerome  and  I — though  I  say  it — are  absolutely  of  the  same  mind."] 

1  [Compare  Sesame  and  Lilies,  §  17  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  67).] 

2  [Ruskin  often  notices  this  unconsciousness  in  men  of  prophetic  power ;  as  of 
[oses  (Vol.  VI.  p.  461)  and  of  Giotto  (Vol.  XXIV.  p.  18) ;  and  so,  too,  of  himself 
^ol.  XXIX.  p.  138).] 

'  [Luke  xvi.  31.] 


I 


110  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


Books"  took  the  abiding  form  of  which  all  the  future  art 
of  the  Western  nations  was  to  be  an  hourly  enlarging 
interpretation. 

39.  And  in  this  matter  you  have  to  note  that  the  gist 
of  it  lies,  not  in  the  translation  of  the  Hebrew  and  Greek 
Scriptures  into  an  easier  and  a  common  language,  but  in 
their  presentation  to  the  Church  as  of  common  authority. 
The  earlier  Gentile  Christians  had  naturally  a  tendency  tc 
carry  out  in  various  oral  exaggeration  or  corruption,  the 
teaching  of  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  until  their  freedoni 
from  the  bondage  of  the  Jewish  law  passed  into  doubt  oi 
its  inspiration ;  and,  after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  even  into 
horror-stricken  interdiction  of  its  observance.  So  that,  onl} 
a  few  years  after  the  remnant  of  exiled  Jews  in  Pella  had 
elected  the  Gentile  Marcus  for  their  Bishop,  and  obtained 
leave  to  return  to  the  iElia  Capitolina  built  by  Hadriar 
on  Mount  Zion,  "it  became  a  matter  of  doubt  and  con- 
troversy  whether  a  man  who  sincerely  acknowledged  Jesu.' 
as  the  Messiah,  but  who  still  continued  to  observe  the  law 
of  Moses,  could  possibly  hope  for  salvation !  "  ^  While,  or 
the  other  hand,  ,the  most  learned  and  the  most  wealth} 
of  the  Christian  name,  under  the  generally  recognized  titlt 
of  "knowing"  (Gnostic),  had  more  insidiously  effaced  tht 
authority  of  the  Evangelists  by  dividing  themselves,  during 
the  course  of  the  third  century,  "into  more  than  fift} 
numerably  distinct  sects,  and  producing  a  multitude  of  his 
tories,  in  which  the  actions  and  discourses  of  Christ  anc 
His  Apostles  were  adapted  to  their  several  tenets."  t 

40.  It  would  be  a  task  of  great,  and  in  nowise  profitabk 
difficulty  to  determine  in  what  measure  the  consent  of  tht 

*  Gibbon,  chap.  xv.  (ii.  277). 

j*  Ihid.f  ii.  283.    His  expression  "the  most  learned  and  most  wealthy 
should  be  remembered  in  confirmation  of  the  evermore  recurring  fact  o 
Christianity,  that  minds  modest  in  attainment,  and  lives  careless  of  gain 
are  fittest  for  the  reception  of  every  constant^  Christian  principle. 


1  [Here,  in  ed.  1,  the  note  continued,  — i.e.  not  local  or  accidental, — . 
Ruskin  omitted  the  words  on  revision  in  1885.] 


I 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


111 


l^^eneral  Church,  and  in  what  measure  the  act  and  authority 
j)f  Jerome,  contributed  to  fix  in  their  ever  since  undisturbed 
liarmony  and  majesty,  the  canons  of  Mosaic  and  Apostolic 
Scripture.  All  that  the  young  reader  need  know  is,  that 
vhen  Jerome  died  at  Bethlehem,  this  great  deed  was  vir- 
ually  accomplished ;  and  the  series  of  historic  and  didactic 
!)ooks  which  form  our  present  Bible,  (including  the  Apoc- 
ypha)  were  established  in  and  above  the  nascent  thought 
j)f  the  noblest  races  of  men  living  on  the  terrestrial  globe, 
lis  a  direct  message  to  them  from  its  Maker,  containing 
jvhatever  it  was  necessary  for  them  to  learn  of  His  purposes 
i  owards  them  ;  and  commanding,  or  advising,  with  divine 
uthority  and  infallible  wisdom,  all  that  was  best  for  them 

0  do,  and  happiest  to  desire. 

41.  And  it  is  only  for  those  who  have  obeyed  the  law 
incerely,  to  say  how  far  the  hope  held  out  to  them  by 

1  he  law-giver  has  been  fulfilled.  The  worst  "children  of 
jlisobedience "  ^  are  those  who  accept,  of  the  Word,  what 
[hey  like,  and  refuse  what  they  hate :  nor  is  this  perversity 
n  them  always  conscious,  for  the  greater  part  of  the  sins 
)f  the  Church  have  been  brought  on  it  by  enthusiasm 
vhich,  in  passionate  contemplation  and  advocacy  of  parts 
|)f  Scripture  easily  grasped,  neglected  the  study,  and  at 
ast  betrayed  the  balance,  of  the  rest.^  What  forms  and 
nethods  of  self-will  are  concerned  in  the  wresting  of  the 
scriptures  to  a  man's  destruction,  is  for  the  keepers  of 
consciences  to  examine,  not  for  us.  The  history  we  have 
:o  learn  must  be  wholly  cleared  of  such  debate,  and  the 
nfluence  of  the  Bible  watched  exclusively  on  the  persons 
jvho  receive  the  Word  with  joy,^  and  obey  it  in  truth. 

I  42.  There  has,  however,  been  always  a  farther  difficulty 
n  examining  the  power  of  the  Bible,  than  that  of  dis- 
inguishing  honest  from  dishonest  readers.  The  hold  of 
^Christianity  on  the  souls  of  men  must  be  examined,  when 

*  [Ephesians  v.  6.] 

*  [Compare  Time  and  Tide,  §  87  (Vol.  XVII.  p.  350).] 
3  [Luke  viii.  13.] 


112  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


we  come  to  close  dealing  with  it,  under  these  three  several 
heads :  there  is  first,  the  power  of  the  Cross  itself,  and  of 
the  theory  of  salvation,  upon  the  heart, — then,  the  operation 
of  the  Jewish  and  Greek  Scriptures  on  the  intellect, — then, 
the  influence  on  morals  of  the  teaching  and  example  of  the 
living  hierarchy.  And  in  the  comparison  of  men  as  they 
are  and  as  they  might  have  been  there  are  these  three 
questions  to  be  separately  kept  in  mind, — first,  what  would 
have  been  the  temper  of  Europe  without  the  charity  and 
labour  meant  by  "  bearing  the  Cross " ;  then,  secondly, 
what  would  the  intellect  of  Europe  have  become  without 
Biblical  literature  ;  and  lastly,  what  would  the  social  order 
of  Europe  have  become  without  its  hierarchy. 

43.  You  see  I  have  connected  the  words  "  charity  "  and 
*' labour"  under  the  general  term  of  "bearing  the  cross." 
"  If  any  man  will  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself, 
(for  charity)  and  take  up  his  cross  (of  pain)  and  follow  me."^ 

The  idea  has  been  exactly  reversed  by  modern  Protes- 
tantism, which  sees,  in  the  cross,  not  a  furca  to  which  it 
is  to  be  nailed;  but  a  raft  on  which  it,  and  all  its  valuable 
properties,"^  are  to  be  floated  into  Paradise. 

44.  Only,  therefore,  in  days  when  the  cross  was  received 
with  courage,  the  Scripture  searched  with  honesty,  and 
the  Pastor  heard  in  faith,  can  the  pure  word  of  God,  and 
the  bright  sword  of  the  Spirit,^  be  recognized  in  the  heart 
and  hand  of  Christianity.  The  effect  of  Biblical  poetry 
and  legend  on  its  intellect,  must  be  traced  farther,  through 
decadent  ages,  and  in  unfenced  fields  ; — producing  Paradise 
Lost  for  us,  no  less  than  the  Divina  Commedia ; — Goethe's 
Faust,  and  Byron's  Cain,  no  less  than  the  Imitatio  Christi. 

*  Quite  one  of  the  most  curious  colours  of  modern  Evangelical  thought 
is  its  pleasing  connection  ol  Gospel  truth  with  the  extension  of  lucrative 
commerce!    See  farther  the  note  at  p.  11 6. 


1  [Matthew  xvi.  24  :  compare  Lectures  on  Art,  §  59  (Vol.  XX.  p.  66) ;  and 
for  the  idea  of  the  Cross  as  a  raft,  Ariadne  Florentina^  §§  28,  29  (Vol.  XXII. 
pp.  316,  317).] 

^  [Ephesians  vi.  17.] 


I 

i 


TIL  THE  LION  TAMER 


113 


45.  Much  more,  must  the  scholar,  who  would  com- 
prehend in  any  degree  approaching  to  completeness,  the 
influence  of  the  Bible  on  mankind,  be  able  to  read  the 
■nterpretations   of  it   which   rose  into   the  great   arts  of 
Europe  at  their  culmination.    In  every  province  of  Christen- 
dom, according  to  the  degree  of  art-power  it  possessed, 
1  series  of  illustrations  of  the  Bible  were  produced  as  time 
ATcnt  on ;  beginning  with  vignetted  illustrations  of  manu- 
script, advancing   into  life-size  sculpture,   and  concluding 
n  perfect  power  of  realistic  painting.    These  teachings  and 
preachings  of  the  Church,  by  means  of  art,  are  not  only 
I  most  important  part  of  the  general  Apostolic  Acts  of 
]!hristianity ;  but  their  study  is  a  necessary  part  of  Biblical 
cholarship,  so  that  no  man  can  in  any  large  sense  under- 
tand  the  Bible  itself  until  he  has  learned  also  to  read 
hese  national  commentaries  upon  it,  and  been  made  aware 
)f  their  collective  weight.    The   Protestant  reader,  who 
aost  imagines  himself  independent  in   his  thought,  and 
Private  in  his  study,  of  Scripture,  is  nevertheless  usually 
Lt  the  mercy  of  the  nearest  preacher  who  has  a  pleasant 
loice  and  ingenious  fancy;  receiving  from  him  thankfully, 
nd  often  reverently,  whatever  interpretation  of  texts  the 
greeable  voice  or  ready  wit  may  recommend :  while,  in 
he  meantime,  he  remains  entirely  ignorant  of,  and  if  left 
0  his  own  will,  invariably  destroys  as  injurious,  the  deeply 
leditated  interpretations  of  Scripture  which,  in  their  matter, 
ave  been  sanctioned  by  the  consent  of  all  the  Christian 
i'hurch  for  a  thousand  years ;  and  in  their  treatment,  have 
•een  exalted  by  the  trained  skill  and  inspired  imagination 
f  the  noblest  souls  ever  enclosed  in  mortal  clay. 

46.  There  are  few  of  the  fathers  of  the  Christian  Church 
^hose  commentaries  on  the  Bible,  or  personal  theories  of 
:s  gospel,  have  not  been,  to  the  constant  exultation  of  the 
jnemies  of  the  Church,  fretted  and  disgraced  by  angers 
if  controversy,  or  weakened  and  distracted  by  irreconcilable 
icresy.  On  the  contrary,  the  scriptural  teaching,  through 
leir  art,  of  such  men  as  Orcagna,  Giotto,  Angelico,  Luca 

XXXIII.  H 


114 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


della  Robbia,  and  Luini,  is,  literally,  free  from  all  earthly 
taint  of  momentary  passion ;  its  patience,  meekness,  and 
quietness  are  incapable  of  error  through  either  fear  or 
anger ;  they  are  able,  without  offence,  to  say  all  that  they 
wish ;  they  are  bound  by  tradition  into  a  brotherhood  which 
represents  unperverted  doctrines  by  unchanging  scenes ;  and 
they  are  compelled  by  the  nature  of  their  work  to  a 
deliberation  and  order  of  method  which  result  in  the  purest 
state  and  frankest  use  of  all  intellectual  power. 

47.  I  may  at  once,  and  without  need  of  returning  to 
this  question,  illustrate  the  difference  in  dignity  and  safety 
between  the  mental  actions  of  literature  and  art,  by  re- 
ferring to  a  passage,  otherwise  beautifully  illustrative  of 
St.  Jerome's  sweetness  and  simplicity  of  character,  though 
quoted,  in  the  place  where  we  find  it,  with  no  such  favour- 
ing intention, — namely,  in  the  pretty  letter  of  Queen  Sophie 
Charlotte  (father's  mother  of  Frederick  the  Great),  to  the 
Jesuit  Vota,  given  in  part  by  Carlyle  in  his  first  volume, 
ch.  iv. : — 

*' '  How  can  St.  Jerome,  for  example,  be  a  key  to  Scripture  ? '  she 
insinuates ;  citing  from  Jerome  this  remarkable  avowal  of  his  method  of 
composing  books ;  —  especially  of  his  method  in  that  book,  Commentary 
on  the  Galatians,  where  he  accuses  both  Peter  and  Paul  of  simulation, 
and  even  of  hypocrisy.  The  great  St.  Augustine  has  been  charging  him 
with  this  sad  fact,  (says  her  Majesty,  who  gives  chapter  and  verse,)  and 
Jerome  answers,  'I  followed  the  commentaries  of  Origen,  of — five  or  six 
different  persons,  who  turned  out  mostly  to  be  heretics  before  Jerome  had 
quite  done  with  them,  in  coming  years,  '  And  to  confess  the  honest  truth 
to  you/  continues  Jerome,  '  I  read  all  that,  and  after  having  crammed  my 
head  with  a  great  many  things,  I  sent  for  my  amanuensis,  and  dictated  to 
him,  now  my  own  thoughts,  now  those  of  others,  without  much  recol- 
lecting the  order,  nor  sometimes  the  words,  nor  even  the  sense!'  In 
another  place,  (in  the  book  itself  further  on  he  says,  '  I  do  not  myself 
write;  I  have  an  amanuensis,  and  I  dictate  to  him  what  comes  into  my 
mouth.  If  I  wish  to  reflect  a  little,  or  to  say  the  thing  better,  or  a 
better  thing,  he  knits  his  brows,  and  the  whole  look  of  him  tells  me 
sufficiently  that  he  cannot  endure  to  wait.'  Here  is  a  sacred  old  gentle- 
man whom  it  is  not  safe  to  depend  upon  for  interpreting  the  Scriptures^ 
— thinks  her  Majesty,  but  does  not  say  so, — leaving  Father  Vota  to  his 
reflections." 


*  Commentary  on  the  Galatians,  chap,  iii. 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


115 


Alas,  no,  Queen  Sophie,  neither  old  St.  Jerome's  nor 
my  other  human  lips  nor  mind,  may  be  depended  upon 
m  that  function;  but  only  the  Eternal  Sophia,  the  Power 
3f  God  and  the  Wisdom  of  God :  ^  yet  this  you  may  see  of 
y^our  old  interpreter,  that  he  is  wholly  open,  innocent,  and 
:rue,  and  that,  through  such  a  person,  whether  forgetful  of 
I  lis  author,  or  hurried  by  his  scribe,  it  is  more  than  probable 
rou  may  hear  what  Heaven  knows  to  be  best  for  you; 
md  extremely  improbable  you  should  take  the  least  harm, 
—while  by  a  careful  and  cunning  master  in  the  literary 
irt,  reticent  of  his  doubts  and  dexterous  in  his  sayings, 
my  number  of  prejudices  or  errors  might  be  proposed  to 
Tou  acceptably,  or  even  fastened  in  you  fatally,  though 
ill  the  while  you  were  not  the  least  required  to  confide  in 
lis  inspiration. 

48.  For  indeed,  the  only  confidence,  and  the  only  safety 
vhich  in  such  matters  we  can  either  hold  or  hope,  are  in 
)ur  own  desire  to  be  rightly  guided,  and  willingness  to 
bllow  in  simplicity  the  guidance  granted.  But  all  our 
onceptions  and  reasonings  on  the  subject  of  inspiration 
lave  been  disordered  by  our  habit,  first  of  distinguishing 
alsely — or  at  least  needlessly — between  inspiration  of  words 
md  of  acts ;  and  secondly  by  our  attribution  of  inspired 
trength  or  wisdom  to  some  persons  or  some  writers  only, 
astead  of  to  the  whole  body  of  believers,  in  so  far  as  they 
re  partakers  of  the  Grace  of  Christ,  the  Love  of  God, 
nd  the  Fellowship  of  the  Holy  Ghost.^  In  the  degree  in 
yhich  every  Christian  receives,  or  refuses,  the  several  gifts 
xpressed  by  that  general  benediction,  he  enters  or  is  cast 
ut  from  the  inheritance  of  the  saints, — in  the  exact  degree 
[1  which  he  denies  the  Christ,  angers  the  Father,  and 
Tieves  the  Holy  Spirit,  he  becomes  uninspired  or  unholy, — 
nd  in  the  measure  in  which  he  trusts  Christ,  obeys  the 
''ather,  and  consents  with  the  Spirit,  he  becomes  inspired 

1  [1  Corinthians  i.  24.] 

'[Compare  Lectures  on  Art,  §  125  (Vol.  XX.   pp.  115,  116),  where  lluskin 

?ain  quotes  and  expounds  this  benediction.  See  also  Letter  V.  in  The  Lord's 
'rayer  and  the  Church  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 


116 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


in  feeling,  act,  word,  and  reception  of  word,  according  to 
the  capacities  of  his  nature.  He  is  not  gifted  with  higher 
abihty,  nor  called  into  new  offices,  but  enabled  to  use  his 
granted  natural  powers,  in  their  appointed  place,  to  the 
best  purpose.  A  child  is  inspired  as  a  child,  and  a  maiden  1 
as  a  maiden ;  the  weak,  even  in  their  weakness,  and  the 
wise,  only  in  their  hour. 

That  is  the  simply  determinable  theory  of  the  inspira- 
tion of  all  true  members,  of  the  Church ;  ^  its  truth  can 
only  be  known  by  proving  it  in  trial :  but  I  believe 
there  is  no  record  of  any  man's  having  tried  and  declared 
it  vain.^ 

49.  Beyond  this  theory  of  general  inspiration,  there  is 
that  of  especial  call  and  command,  with  actual  dictation  of 
the  deeds  to  be  done  or  words  to  be  said.  I  will  enter 
at  present  into  no  examination  of  the  evidences  of  such 
separating  influence;  it  is  not  claimed  by  the  Fathers  of 
the  Church,  either  for  themselves,  or  even  for  the  entire 
body  of  the  Sacred  writers,  but  only  ascribed  to  certain 
passages  dictated  at  certain  times  for  special  needs :  and 
there  is  no  possibility  of  attaching  the  idea  of  infallible 
truth  to  any  form  of  human  language  in  which  even  these 

*  Compare  the  closing  paragraph  in  p.  45  of  The  Shrine  of  the  Slaves.- 
Strangely,  as  I  revise  this  page  for  press,  a  slip  is  sent  me  from  The  Christian 
newspaper,  in  which  the  comment  of  the  orthodox  evangelical  editor  may 
be  hereafter  representative  to  us  of  the  heresy  of  his  sect ;  in  its  last 
audacity,  actually  opposing  the  power  of  the  Spirit  to  the  work  of  Christ. 
(I  only  wish  I  had  been  at  Matlock,  and  heard  the  kind  physician's 
sermon.) 

"  An  interesting  and  somewhat  unusual  sight  was  seen  in  Derbyshire 
on  Saturday  last — two  old-fashioned  Friends,  dressed  in  the  original  garb 
of  the  Quakers,  preaching  on  the  roadside  to  a  large  and  attentive  audience 
in  Matlock.  One  of  them,  who  is  a  doctor  in  good  practice  in  the  county, 
by  name  Dr.  Charles  A.  Fox,  made  a  powerful  and  effective  appeal  to  his 
audience  to  see  to  it  that  each  one  was  living  in  obedience  to  the  light  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  within.  Christ  within  was  the  hope  of  glory,  and  it  was 
as  He  was  followed  in  the    ministry  of  the  Spirit  that  we    were  saved 

*  [On  this  theory  of  "  inspiration  "  compare  Time  and  Tide,  §  36  (Vol.  XVII. 
p.  350).] 

^  [The  reference  is  to  the  original  edition  :  see  now,  §  205  of  St.  Mark's  Rest 
(Vol.  XXIV.  p.  308).] 


\ 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


117 


exceptional  passages  have  been  delivered  to  us.  But  this 
s  demonstrably  true  of  the  entire  volume  of  them,  as  we 
lave  it,  and  read, — each  of  us  as  it  may  be  rendered  in 
lis  native  tongue;  that,  however  mingled  with  mystery 
ivhich  we  are  not  required  to  unravel,  or  difficulties  which 
rve  should  be  insolent  in  desiring  to  solve,  it  contains  plain 
;eaching  for  men  of  every  rank  of  soul  and  state  in  life, 
A^hich  so  far  as  they  honestly  and  implicitly  obey,  they 
mil  be  happy  and  innocent  to  the  utmost  powers  of  their 
lature,  and  capable  of  victory  over  all  adversities,  whether 
)f  temptation  or  pain. 

50.  Indeed,  the  Psalter  alone,  which  practically  was  the 
ervice  book  of  the  Church  for  many  ages,  contains  merely 
n  the  first  half  of  it  the  sum  of  personal  and  social 
visdom.  The  1st,  8th,  12th,  14th,  15th,  19th,  23rd,  and 
J4th  psalms,  well  learned  and  believed,  are  enough  for  all 
personal  guidance ;  the  48th,  72nd,  and  7 5th,  have  in  them 
,he  law  and  the  prophecy  of  all  righteous  government ; 
md  every  real  triumph  of  natural  science  is  anticipated  in 
:he  104th. 

51.  For  the  contents  of  the   entire  volume,  consider 

)y  Him,  who  became  thus  to  each  the  author  and  finisher  of  faith.  He 
•autioned  his  hearers  against  building  their  house  on  the  sand  by  beheving 
n  the  free  and  easy  Gospel  so  commonly  preached  to  the  wayside  hearers, 
is  if  we  were  saved  by  'believing'  this  or  that.  Nothing  short  of  the 
vovk  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  soul  of  each  one  could  save  us,  and  to 
ireach  anything  short  of  this  was  simply  to  delude  the  simple  and  unwary 
n  the  most  terrible  form. 

"  [It  would  be  unfair  to  criticise  an  address  from  so  brief  an  abstract,  but 
ve  must  express  our  conviction  that  the  obedience  of  Christ  unto  death,  the  death 
if  the  Cross,  rather  than  the  work  of  the  Spiiit  in  us,  is  the  good  tidings  for 
inful  men. — Ed.]" 

In  juxtaposition  with  this  editorial  piece  of  modern  British  press  theology, 
'.  will  simply  place  the  4th,  6th,  and  13th  verses  of  Romans  viii.,  italicising 
;he  expressions  which  are  of  deepest  import,  and  always  neglected.  "That 
;he  righteousness  of  the  Law  might  be  fulfilled  in  us,  who  walk  not  after 
;he  flesh,  but  after  the  Spirit.  .  .  .  For  to  be  carnally  minded,  is  death,  but 
;o  be  spiritually  minded,  is  life,  and  peace.  .  .  .  For  if  ye  live  after  the 
lesh,  ye  shall  die ;  but  if  through  the  Spirit  do  mortify  the  deeds  of  the 
)ody,  ye  shall  live." 

It  would  be  well  for  Christendom  if  the  Baptismal  service  explained 
vhat  it  professes  to  abjure. 


118  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


what  other  group  of  historic  and  didactic  literature  has  a 
range  comparable  with  it.    There  are — 

(I.)  The  stories  of  the  Fall  and  of  the  Flood,  the 
grandest  human  traditions  founded  on  a  true  horror  of 
sin. 

(II.)  The  story  of  the  Patriarchs,  of  which  the  effective 
truth  is  visible  to  this  day  in  the  polity  of  the  Jewish  and 
Arab  races. 

(III.)  The  story  of  Moses,  with  the  results  of  that 
tradition  in  the  moral  law  of  all  the  civilized  world. 

(IV.)  The  story  of  the  Kings— virtually  that  of  all 
Kinghood,  in  David,  and  of  all  Philosophy,  in  Solomon: 
culminating  in  the  Psalms  and  Proverbs,  with  the  still 
more  close  and  practical  wisdom  of  Ecclesiasticus  and  the 
Son  of  Sirach. 

(V.)  The  story  of  the  Prophets — virtually  that  of  the 
deepest  mystery,  tragedy,  and  permanent  fate,  of  national 
existence. 

(VI.)  The  story  of  Christ. 

(VII.)  The  moral  law  of  St.  John,  and  his  closing 
Apocalypse  of  its  fulfilment. 

Think,  if  you  can  match  that  table  of  contents  in  any 
other— I  do  not  say  "book"  but  "literature."  Think,  so 
far  as  it  is  possible  for  any  of  us — either  adversary  or 
defender  of  the  faith — to  extricate  his  intelligence  from  the 
habit  and  the  association  of  moral  sentiment  based  upon 
the  Bible,  what  literature  could  have  taken  its  place,  or 
fulfilled  its  function,  though  every  library  in  the  world  had 
remained  unravaged,  and  every  teacher's  truest  words  had 
been  written  down  ? 

52.  I  am  no  despiser  of  profane  literature.  So  far 
from  it,  that  I  believe  no  interpretations  of  Greek  religion 
have  ever  been  so  affectionate,  none  of  Roman  religion  so 
reverent,  as  those  which  will  be  found  at  the  base  of  my 
art  teaching,  and  current  through  the  entire  body  of  my 
works.     But  it  was  from  the  Bible  that   I  learned  the^j 


III.  THE  LION  TAMER 


119 


lymbols  of  Homer,  and  the  faith  of  Horace'/  the  duty 
enforced  upon  me  in  early  youth  of  reading  every  word  of 
he  gospels  and  prophecies  as  if  written  by  the  hand  of 
jod,^  gave  me  the  habit  of  awed  attention  which  afterwards 
nade  many  passages  of  the  profane  writers,  frivolous  to  an 
rreligious  reader,  deeply  grave  to  me.  How  far  my  mind 
las  been  paralysed  by  the  faults  and  sorrow  of  life, — how  far 
,hort  its  knowledge  may  be  of  what  I  might  have  known, 
lad  I  more  faithfully  walked  in  the  light  I  had,  is  beyond 
ny  conjecture  or  confession  :  but  as  I  never  wrote  for  my 
^wn  pleasure  or  self-proclaiming,^  I  have  been  guarded,  as 
nen  who  so  write  always  will  be,  from  errors  dangerous  to 
)thers ;  and  the  fragmentary  expressions  of  feeling  or  state- 
nents  of  doctrine,  which  from  time  to  time  I  have  been 
ible  to  give,  will  be  found  now  by  an  attentive  reader  to 
)ind  themselves  together  into  a  general  system  of  interpreta- 
don  of  Sacred  literature, — both  classic  and  Christian,  which 
will  enable  him  without  injustice  to  sympathize  in  the  faiths 
if  candid  and  generous  souls,  of  every  age  and  every  clime. 

53.  That  there  is  a  Sacred  classic  literature,  running 
parallel  with  that  of  the  Hebrews,  and  coalescing  in  the 
symbolic  legends  of  mediaeval  Christendom,*  is  shown  in 
the  most  tender  and  impressive  way  by  the  independent, 
yet  similar,  influence  of  Virgil  upon  Dante,  and  upon  Bishop 
Gawaine  Douglas.^  At  earlier  dates,  the  teaching  of  every 
master  trained  in  the  Eastern  schools  was  necessarily  grafted 
on  the  wisdom  of  the  Greek  mythology ;  and  thus  the 
story  of  the  Nemean  Lion,  with  the  aid  of  Athena  in 
its  conquest,®  is   the  real   root-stock   of  the  legend  of 

^  [On  the  faith  and  piety "  of  Horace,  see  Queen  of  the  Air,  §§  47,  48 
(Vol.  XIX.  pp.  348-349)  ;  Val  d'Arno,  §§  218  seq.  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  219) ;  and  For» 
Clavigera,  Letter  92,  §  9  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  459).] 

2  [See  PrcBterita,  i.  §  46.] 

^  [Compare  the  close  of  the  Preface  to  vol.  v.  of  Modern  Painters  (Vol.  VII. 
p.  10).] 

*  [Compare  "The  Mending  of  the  Sieve,"  §  14  (below,  p.  238).] 

^  [For  the  bishop's  translation  of  the  JEneid,  see  also  ch.  iv.  §  20  (p.  137  n.) 

and  Pleasures  of  England,  §.67  (below,  p.  463).] 

6  [Compare  Queen  of  the  Air,  Vol.  XIX.  pp.  416-417 ;  and  Val  d'Arno,  §§  17,  203 

(Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  19,  119).] 


120 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


St.  Jerome's  companion,  conquered  by  the  healing  gentleness 
of  the  Spirit  of  Life. 

54*.  I  call  it  a  legend  only.    Whether  Heracles  everi 
slew,  or  St.  Jerome  ever  cherished,  the  wild  or  wounded 
creature,  is  of  no  moment  to  us  in  learning  what  the; 
Greeks   meant  by  their  vase-outlines   of  the  great  con- 
test, or  the  Christian  painters  by  their  fond  insistence  on 
the  constancy  of  the  Lion-friend.    Former  tradition,  in  thei 
story  of  Samson, — of  the  disobedient  Prophet, — of  David'sl 
first  inspired  victory,  and  finally  of  the  miracle  wrought  in 
the  defence  of  the  most  favoured  and  most  faithful  of  the! 
greater  Prophets,^  runs  always  parallel  in  symbolism  with' 
the  Dorian  fable:  but  the  legend  of  St.  Jerome  takes  up 
the  prophecy  of  the  Millennium,  and  foretells,  with  the| 
Cumgean  Sibyl,^  and  with  Isaiah,  a  day  when  the  Fear  oil 
Man  shall  be  laid  in  benediction,  not  enmity,  on  inferior' 
beings, — when  they  shall  not  hurt  nor  destroy  in  all  the 
holy  Mountain,  and  the  Peace  of  the  Eartli  shall  be  as  far. 
removed  from  its  present  sorrow,  as  the  present  gloriously! 
animate  universe  from  the  nascent  desert,  whose  deeps  were' 
the  place  of  dragons,^  and  its  mountains,  domes  of  fire. 

Of  that  day  knoweth  no  man ;  *  but  the  Kingdom  of. 
God  is  already  come  to  those  who  have  tamed  in  their  I 
own  hearts  what  was  rampant  of  the  lower  nature,  andf 
have  learned  to  cherish  what  is  lovely  and  human,  in  thef 
wandering  children  of  the  clouds  and  fields. 

AvALLON,  28th  August,  1882. 

^  [Judges  xiv.  8  ;  1  Kings  xiii.  ;  1  Samuel  xvii.  34-38 ;  Daniel  vi.] 
-  [See  the  fourth  Eclogue  of  Virgil ;  the  passage  is  quoted,  and  commented 
upon,  by  Ruskin  in  Ariadne   Florentina,  Vol.    XXII.    p.    448.    The  notice  by 
Virgil  of  a  prophecy  concerning  the  regeneration  of  the  world  by  the  birth  of  a  ii 
child,  at  a  date  only  forty  years  before  the  Christian  era,  has  been  the  subject  of  I 
much  speculation  ;  as  also  the  resemblance  which  some  passages  in  Virgil's  descrip- 
tion of  the  millennium  bear  to  some  in  Isaiah  :  compare,  for  instance,  Isaiah  xi.  9 
(here  quoted  by  Ruskin)  with  Eclogue  iv.  22 :   ^'  nec  magnos  metuent  armenta 
leones."    See  on  the  whole  subject  Virgil's  Messianic  Eclogue:  its  Meaning,  Occasion, 
and  Sources,  by  J.  B.  Mayor,  W.  Warde  Fowler,  and  R.  S.  Conway  (1907).] 
^  [See  Psalms  xliv.  19,  cxlviii.  7.] 
[Matthew  xxiv.  36.] 


4 

4 


CHAPTER  IV 

INTERPRETATIONS 

.  It  is  the  admitted  privilege  of  a  eustode  who  loves 
is  cathedral  to  depreciate,  in  its  comparison,  all  the  other 
athedrals  of  his  country  that  resemble,  and  all  the  edifices 
n  the  globe  that  differ  from  it.  But  I  love  too  many 
ithedrals — though  I  have  never  had  the  happiness  of  be- 
aming the  eustode  of  even  one — to  permit  myself  the 
asy  and  faithful  exercise  of  the  privilege  in  question;  and 
must  vindicate  my  candour,  and  my  judgment,  in  the 
utset,  by  confessing  that  the  cathedral  of  Amiens  has 
othing  to  boast  of  in  the  v^ay  of  towers, — that  its  central 
eche  is  merely  the  pretty  caprice  of  a  village  carpenter, — 
lat  the  total  structure  is  in  dignity  inferior  to  Chartres, 
I  sublimity  to  Beauvais,  in  decorative  splendour  to  Rheims, 
[id  in  loveliness  of  figure-sculpture  to  Bourges.  It  has 
othing  like  the  artful  pointing  and  moulding  of  the  arcades 
I  Salisbury — nothing  of  the  might  of  Durham ; — no  Dseda- 
an  inlaying  like  Florence,  no  glow  of  mythic  fantasy  like 
erona.  And  yet,  in  all,  and  more  than  these,  ways,  out- 
jione  or  overpowered,  the  cathedral  of  Amiens  deserves 
lie  name  given  it  by  M.  VioUet-le-Duc — 
"The  Parthenon  of  Gothic  Architecture."^ 
,  Of  Gothic,  mind  you ;  Gothic  clear  of  Roman  tradi- 
I   on,  and   of  Arabian  taint ;   Gothic  pure,  authoritative, 

!  *  Of  French  Architecture,  accurately,  in  the  place  quoted,  Dictionary/ 
IE  'Architecture,  vol.  i.  p.  71;^  but  in  the  article  " Cathedrale,"  it  is  called 
*   lol.  ii.  p.  330)  "I'eglise  ogivale  par  excellence." 


[Where,  however,  the  reference  is  not  to  Amiens^  but  to  Beauvais.] 

121 


122 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


unsurpassable,  and  unaccusable ; — its  proper  principles  of 
structure  being  once  understood  and  admitted. 

2.  No  well-educated  traveller  is  now  without  some 
consciousness  of  the  meaning  of  what  is  commonly  and 
rightly  called  "purity  of  style,"  in  the  modes  of  art  which 
have  been  practised  by  civilized  nations ;  and  few  are  un- 
aware of  the  distinctive  aims  and  character  of  Gothic. 
The  purpose  of  a  good  Gothic  builder  was  to  raise,  with 
the  native  stone  of  the  place  he  had  to  build  in,  an  edifice 
as  high  and  as  spacious  as  he  could,  with  calculable  and 
visible  security,  in  no  protracted  and  wearisome  time,  and 
with  no  monstrous  or  oppressive  compulsion  of  human 
labour. 

He  did  not  wish  to  exhaust  in  the  pride  of  a  single 
city  the  energies  of  a  generation,  or  the  resources  of  a 
kingdom ;  he  built  for  Amiens  with  the  strength  and  the 
exchequer  of  Amiens ;  with  chalk  from  the  cliffs  of  the 
Somme,^  and  under  the  orders  of  two  successive  bishops, 
one  of  whom  directed  the  foundations  of  the  edifice,  andf 
the  other  gave  thanks  in  it  for  its  completion.^  His  object, 
as  a  designer,  in  common  with  all  the  sacred  builders  of 
his  time  in  the  North,  was  to  admit  as  much  light  into 
the  building  as  was  consistent  with  the  comfort  of  it;  to 
make  its  structure  intelligibly  admirable,  but  not  curious 

*  It  was  a  universal  principle  with  the  French  builders  of  the  great 
ages  to  use  the  stones  of  their  quarries  as  they  lay  in  the  bed ;  ^  if  the 
beds  were  thick,  the  stones  were  used  of  their  full  thickness — if  thin,  ol 
their  necessary  thinness,  adjusting  them  with  beautiful  care  to  directions 
of  thrust  and  weight.  The  natural  blocks  were  never  sawn,  only  squared 
into  fitting,  the  whole  native  strength  and  crystallization  of  the  stone  being 
thus  kept  unflawed — "  ne  dedouhlaid  jamais  une  pierre.  Cette  methode  est 
excellente,  elle  conserve  a  la  pierre  toute  sa  force  naturelle, — tons  ses  moyens 
de  resistance/*  See  M.  Viollet-le-Duc,  Article  ''Construction"  (Materiaux), 
vol.  iv.  p.  129.  He  adds  the  very  notable  fact  that,  to  this  day,  in  seventt^ 
departments  of  France,  the  use  of  the  stone-saw  is  zmknown.^ 


1  [See  §  24  n.  ;  p.  139.] 

2  [On  this  point,  compare  Val  d'Amo,  §  152  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  92).] 

^  [And  adds  further  that  they  are  those  where  the  construction  is  best.] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS  123 

•  confusing ;  and  to  enrich  and  enforce  the  understood 

•  ructure  with  ornament  sufficient  for  its  beauty,  yet  yield- 
g  to  no  wanton  enthusiasm  in  expenditure,  nor  insolent 

:  giddy  or  selfish  ostentation  of  skill ;  and  finally,  to  make 
.e  external  sculpture  of  its  walls  and  gates  at  once  an 

iphabet  and  epitome  of  the  religion,  by  the  knowledge  and 

spiration  of  which  an  acceptable  worship  might  be  ren- 
(3red,  within  those  gates,  to  the  Lord  whose  Fear  was  in 

is  Holy  Temple,  and  whose  seat  was  in  Heaven.^ 

!  3.  It  is  not  easy  for  the  citizen  of  the  modern  aggregate 
bad  building,  and  ill-living  held  in  check  by  constables, 

hich  we  call  a  town, — of  which  the  widest  streets  are 
(ivoted  by  consent  to  the  encouragement  of  vice,  and  the 
iirrow  ones  to  the  concealment  of  misery, — not  easy,  I 
j  y,  for  the  citizen  of  any  such  mean  city  to  understand 

•  e  feeling  of  a  burgher   of  the   Christian   ages   to  his 
"thedral.    For  him,  the  quite  simply  and  frankly-believed 
xt,  "  Where  two  or  three  are  gathered  in  my  name,  there 

;n  I  in  the  midst  of  them,  '^  was  expanded  into  the  wider 
omise  to  many  honest  and  industrious  persons  gathered 
His  name — "They  shall  be  my  people  and  I  will  be 
eir  God  "  ;  ^ — deepened  in  his  reading  of  it,  by  some  lovely 
!eal  and  simply  affectionate  faith  that  Christ,  as  He  was 
Jew  among  Jews,  and  a  Galilean  among  Galileans,  was 
ISO,  in  His  nearness  to  any — even  the  poorest — group  of 
<sciples,  as  one  of  their  nation;  and  that  their  own  **  Beau 
'  hrist  d' Amiens "  was  as  true  a  compatriot  to  them  as  if 
^e  had  been  born  of  a  Picard  maiden. 

4.  It  is  to   be  remembered,  however — and  this  is  a 
leological  point  on  which  depended  much  of  the  struc- 
iral  development  of  the  northern  basilicas — that  the  part 
<■  the  building  in  which  the  Divine  presence  was  believed 
be  constant,  as  in  the  Jewish  Holy  of  Holies,  was 
uly  the  enclosed  choir;  in  front  of  which  the  aisles  and 

^  [Psalms  xi.  4  (Prayer-book  version).] 
2  [Matthew  xviii.  20.] 
j  3  [2  Corinthians  vi.  16.] 


124 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


transepts  might  become  the  King's  Hall  of  Justice,  as  in' 
the  presence-chamber  of  Christ;  and  whose  high  altar  was] 
guarded  always  from  the  surrounding  eastern  aisles  by  a 
screen  of  the  most  finished  workmanship;  while  from  those 
surrounding  aisles  branched  off  a  series  of  radiating  chapels, 
or  cells,  each  dedicated  to  some  separate  saint.  This  con-i 
ception  of  the  company  of  Christ  with  His  saints,  (the 
eastern  chapel  of  all  being  the  Virgin's,)  was  at  the  root  of 
the  entire  disposition  of  the  apse  with  its  supporting  and 
dividing  buttresses  and  piers ;  and  the  architectural  forni!! 
can  never  be  well  delighted  in,  unless  in  some  sympathy' 
with  the  spiritual  imagination  out  of  which  it  rose.  We 
talk  foolishly  and  feebly  of  symbols  and  types :  in  old 
Christian  architecture,  every  part  is  litej^al:  the  cathedral  u 
for  its  builders  the  House  of  God ;  ^ — it  is  surrounded,  like^ 
an  earthly  king's,  with  minor  lodgings  for  the  servants;' 
and  the  glorious  carvings  of  the  exterior  walls  and  interior 
wood  of  the  choir,  which  an  English  rector  would  almost 
instinctively  think  of  as  done  for  the  glorification  of  the 
canons,  was  indeed  the  Amienois  carpenter's  way  of  making 
his  Master-carpenter^  comfortable,''' — nor  less  of  showing 
his  ow^n  native  and  insuperable  virtue  of  carpenter,  before 
God  and  man. 

4 

*  The  philosophic  reader  is  quite  welcome  to  "detect"  and  "expose' 
as  many  carnal  motives  as  he  pleases,  besides  the  good  ones, — competition 
with  neighbour  Beauvais^ — comfort  to  sleepy  heads — solace  to  fat  sides, 
and  the  like.  He  will  find  at  last  that  no  quantity  of  competition  or  com- 
fort-seeking will  do  anything  the  like  of  this  carving  now ; — still  less  W\ 
own  philosophy,  whatever  its  species :  and  that  it  was  indeed  the  little 
mustard-seed  of  faith  ^  in  the  heart,  with  a  very  notable  quantity  of  honest) 
besides  in  the  habit  and  disposition,  that  made  all  the  rest  grow  togethei 
for  good.^ 


^  [Compare  the  phrase  ^'logeurs  du  Bon  Dieu"  for  the  masons:  Vol.  XVII. 
p.  280,  and  Vol.  XX.  p.  67.] 

2  [Compare  Lectures  on  Art,  §  31  (Vol.  XX.  p.  45).] 

^  [^^  A  most  amiable  weakness,"  however,  as  Ruskiu  admits :  see  the  reference 
to  the  rivalry  between  Beauvais  and  Amiens  in  Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting 
§  19  (Vol.  XII.  p.  39).] 

*  [See  Matthew  xvii.  20.] 

^  [See  Romans  viii.  28.] 


VII 


The  Choir  Stalls 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


125 


5.  Whatever  you  wish  to  see,  or  are  forced  to  leave 
nseen,  at  Amiens,  if  the  overwhelming  responsibilities  of 
our  existence,  and  the  inevitable  necessities  of  precipitate 
)Comotion  in  their  fulfilment,  have  left  you  so  much  as  one 
uarter  of  an  hour,  not  out  of  breath — for  the  contempla- 
on  of  the  capital  of  Picardy,  give  it  wholly  to  the  cathedral 
hoir.  Aisles  and  porches,  lancet  windows  and  roses,  you 
an  see  elsewhere  as  well  as  here — but  such  carpenter's 
^ork,  you  cannot.  It  is  late, — fully  developed  flamboyant 
ist  past  the  fifteenth  century — and  has  some  Flemish 
colidity  mixed  with  the  playing  French  fire  of  it;  but 
^ood-carving  was  the  Picard's  joy  from  his  youth  up,  and, 
)  far  as  I  know,  there  is  nothing  else  so  beautiful  cut  out 
f  the  goodly  trees  of  the  world. 

Sweet  and  young-grained  wood  it  is :  oak,  ti^amed  and 
losen  for  such  work,  sound  now  as  four  hundred  years 
nee.  Under  the  carver's  hand  it  seems  to  cut  like  clay, 
)  fold  like  silk,  to  grow  like  living  branches,  to  leap  like 
ving  flame.  Canopy  crowning  canopy,  pinnacle  piercing 
innacle — it  shoots  and  wreathes  itself  into  an  enchanted 
lade,  inextricable,  imperishable,  fuller  of  leafage  than  any 
)rest,  and  fuller  of  story  than  any  book."^ 

*  Arnold  Boulin,  master-joiner  (menuisier)  at  Amiens,  solicited  the  enter- 
•ise,  and  obtained  it  in  the  first  months  of  the  year  1508.  A  contract 
as  drawn  and  an  agreement  made  with  him  for  the  construction  of  one 
mdred  and  twenty  stalls  with  historical  subjects,  high  backings,  crownings, 
id  pyramidal  canopies.  It  was  agreed  that  the  principal  executor  should 
ave  seven  sous  of  Tournay  (a  little  less  than  the  sou  of  France)  a  day, 
ir  himself  and  his  apprentice  (threepence  a  day  the  two — say  a  shilling 
week  the  master,  and  sixpence  a  week  the  man),  and  for  the  super- 
itendence  of  the  whole  work,  twelve  crowns  a  year,  at  the  rate  of  twenty- 
»ur  sous  the  crown ;  (z.e.,  twelve  shillings  a  year).  The  salary  of  the  simple 
orkman  was  only  to  be  three  sous  a  day.  For  the  sculptures  and  histories 
I  the  seats,  the  bargain  was  made  separately  with  Antoine  Avernier, 
(lage-cutter,  residing  at  Amiens,  at  the  rate  of  thirty-two  sous  (sixteen 
3nce)  the  piece.  Most  of  the  wood  came  from  Clermont  en  Beauvoisis, 
■jar  Amiens ;  the  finest,  for  the  bas-reliefs,  from  Holland,  by  St.  Valery 
id  Abbeville.  The  Chapter  appointed  four  of  its  own  members  to  super- 
itend  the  work :  Jean  Dumas,  Jean  Fabres,  Pierre  Vuaille,  and  Jean 
englache,  to  whom  my  authors  (canons  both)  attribute  the  choice  of  sub- 
lets, the  placing  of  them,  and  the  initiation  of  the  workmen  '^au  sens 


126 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


6.  I  have  never  been  able  to  make  up  my  mind  which 
was  really  the  best  way  of  approaching  the  cathedral  fori 
the  first  time.    If  you  have  plenty  of  leisure,  and  the  day; 
is   fine,  and  you  are  not  afraid  of  an  hour's  walk,  the 
really  right  thing  to  do  is  to  walk  dow^n  the  main  street 
of  the  old  town,  and  across  the  river,  and  quite  out  to  the 

veritable  et  plus  eleve  de  la  Bible  ou  des  legendes,  et  portant  quelquefois 
le  simple  savoir-faire  de  Touvrier  jusqu'a  la  hauteur  du  genie  du  theologian." 

Without  pretending  to  apportion  the  credit  of  savoir-faire  and  theology  i| 
in  the  business,  we  have  only  to  observe  that  the  whole  company,  master, 
apprentices,  workmen,  image-cutter,  and  four  canons,  got  well  into  traces, 
and  set  to  work  on  the  3rd  of  July,  1508,  in  the  great  hall  of  the  eveche, 
which  was  to  be  the  workshop  and  studio  during  the  whole  time  of  the 
business.  In  the  following  year,  another  menuisier,  Alexander  Huet,  was 
associated  with  the  body,  to  carry  on  the  stalls  on  the  right  hand  of  the 
choir,  while  Arnold  Boulin  went  on  with  those  on  the  left.  Arnold,  leaving 
his  new  associate  in  command  for  a  time,  went  to  Beauvais  and  St.  Riquier, 
to  see  the  woodwork  there;  and  in  July  of  1511  both  the  masters  went 
to  Rouen  together,  ''pour  etudier  les  chaires  de  la  cathedrale."  The  year 
before,  also,  two  Franciscans,  monks  of  Abbeville,  "  expert  and  renowned  in 
working  in  wood,"  had  been  called  by  the  Amiens  chapter  to  give  their 
opinion  on  things  in  progress,  and  had  each  twenty  sous  for  his  opinion, 
and  travelling  expenses. 

In  1516,  another  and  an  important  name  appears  on  the  accounts,— 
that  of  Jean  Trupin,  "a  simple  workman  at  the  wages  of  three  sous  a  day," 
but  doubtless  a  good  and  spirited  carver,  whose  true  portrait  it  is  without 
doubt,  and  by  his  own  hand,  that  forms  the  elbow-rest  of  the  85th  stall 
(right  hand,  nearest  apse),  beneath  which  is  cut  his  name  JHAN  TRUPIN, 
and  again  under  the  92nd  stall,  with  the  added  wish,  "Jan  Trupin,  God 
take  care  of  thee"  {Dieu  te  pourvoie). 

The  entire  work  was  ended  on  St.  John's  Day,  1522,  without  (so  far 
as  we  hear)  any  manner  of  interruption  by  dissension,  death,  dishonesty,  or 
incapacity,  among  its  fellow-workmen,  master  or  servant.  And  the  accounts 
being  audited  by  four  members  of  the  Chapter,  it  was  found  that  the  total 
expense  was  9488  livres,  11  sous,  and  3  obols  (decimes),  or  474  napoleons, 
11  sous,  3  decimes  of  modern  French  money,  or  roughly  four  hundred 
sterling  English  pounds. 

For  which  sum,  you  perceive,  a  company  of  probably  six  or  eight  good 
workmen,  old  and  young,  had  been  kept  merry  and  busy  for  fourteen; 
years ;  and  this  that  you  see — left  for  substantial  result  and  gift  to  you.  | 

I  have  not  examined  the  carvings  so  as  to  assign,  with  any  decision, 
the  several  masters'  work ;  but  in  general  the  flower  and  leaf  design  in 
the  traceries  will  be  by  the  two  head  menuisiers,  and  their  apprentices; 
the  elaborate  Scripture  histories  by  Avernier,  with  variously  completing' 
incidental  grotesque  by  Trupin ;  and  the  joining  and  fitting  by  the  common 
workmen.  No  nails  are  used, — all  is  morticed,  and  so  beautifully  that  the 
joints  have  not  moved  to  this  day,  and  are  still  almost  imperceptible.  Thelj 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


127 


halk  hill'^  out  of  which  the  citadel  is  half  quarried — half 
/ailed; — and  walk  to  the  top  of  that,  and  look  down  into 
he  citadel's  dry  ''ditch," — or,  more  truly,  dry  valley  of 
eath,  which  is  about  as  deep  as  a  glen  in  Derbyshire,  (or, 
lore  precisely,  the  upper  part  of  the  *'  Happy  Valley  at 
)xford,  above  Lower  Hincksey,^)  and  thence  across  to  the 
athedral  and  ascending  slopes  of  the  city ;  so,  you  will 
nderstand  the  real  height  and  relation  of  tower  and  town : 
-then,  returning,  find  your  way  to  the  Mount  Zion  of  it 
y  any  narrow  cross  streets  and  chance  bridges  you  can — 
he  more  winding  and  dirty  the  streets,  the  better;  and 
whether  you  come  first  on  west  front  or  apse,  you  will 
link  them  worth  all  the  trouble  you  have  had  to  reach 
lem. 

7.  But  if  the  day  be  dismal,  as  it  may  sometimes  be, 
v^en  in  France,  of  late  years, — or  if  you  cannot  or  will  not 
^alk,  which  may  also  chance,  for  all  our  athletics  and 
iwn-tennis, — or  if  you  must  really  go  to  Paris  this  after- 
oon,  and  only  mean  to  see  all  you  can  in  an  hour  or  two, 
-then,  supposing  that,  notwithstanding  these  weaknesses, 

ur  terminal  pyramids  ''you  might  take  for  giant  pines  forgotten  for  six 
mturies  on  the  soil  where  the  church  was  built ;  they  might  be  looked 
11  at  first  as  a  wild  luxury  of  sculpture  and  hollow  traceries — but  examined 

analysis  they  are  marvels  of  order  and  system  in  construction,  uniting  all 
le  lightness,  strength,  and  grace  of  the  most  renowned  spires  in  the  last 
Doch  of  the  Middle  Ages." 

The  above  particulars  are  all  extracted — or  simply  translated,  out  of 
le  excellent  description  of  the  Sialics  et  les  Clotures  du  Choeur  of  the 
athedral  of  Amiens,  by  MM.  les  Chanoines  Jourdain  et  Duval  (Amiens, 
V.  Alfred  Caron,  1867).^  The  accompanying  lithographic  outlines  are 
fceedingly  good,  and  the  reader  will  find  the  entire  series  of  subjects 
idicated  with  precision  and  brevity,  both  for  the  woodwork  and  the  external 
2il  of  the  choir,  of  which  I  have  no  room  to  speak  in  this  traveller's 
unraary. 

*  The  strongest  and  finally  to  be  defended  part  of  the  earliest  city  was 
1  this  height. 


1  [One  of  the  little  valleys  that  debouch  on  the  valley  of  the  Thames  behind 
le  Hinckseys"  (Dr.  Arnold's  letter  to  Clough,  in  Stanley's  Life  of  Arnold,  p.  467 
d.  1901).    Compare,  below,  p.  527.] 

2  [The  book  is  a  reprint  from  the  description  of  the  stalls  published  in  1844  in 
le  Memoires  de  la  Societe  des  Anttquaii'es  de  Picardie.] 


128 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


you  are  still  a  nice  sort  of  person,  for  whom  it  is  of  some 
consequence  which  way  you  come  at  a  pretty  thing,  or  begin 
to  look  at  it — I  think  the  best  way  is  to  walk  from  the 
Hotel  de  France  or  the  Place  de  Perigord,  up  the  Street 
of  Three  Pebbles,  towards  the  railway  station — stopping  a 
little  as  you  go,  so  as  to  get  into  a  cheerful  temper,  and 
buying  some  bonbons  or  tarts  for  the  children  in  one  of 
the  charming  patissiers'  shops  on  the  left.    Just  past  them, 
ask  for  the  theatre ;  and  just  past  that,  you  will  find,  also 
on  the  left,  three  open  arches,  through  which  you  can  turn, 
passing  the  Palais  de  Justice,  and  go  straight  up  to  the 
south  transept,  which   has  really  something  about  it  to 
please  everybody.    It  is  simple  and  severe  at  the  bottom, 
and  daintily  traceried  and  pinnacled  at  the  top,  and  yet 
seems  all  of  a  piece— though  it  isn't — and  everybody  must 
like  the  taper  and  transparent  fretwork  of  the  fleche  above, 
which  seems  to  bend  to  the  west  wind, — though  it  doesn't 
— at  least,  the  bending  is  a  long  habit,  gradually  yielded 
into,  with  gaining  grace  and  submissiveness,  during  the  last 
three  hundred  years.    And,  coming  quite  up  to  the  porch, 
everybody  must  like  the  pretty  French  Madonna  in  the 
middle  of  it,  with  her  head  a  little  aside,  and  her  nimbus 
switched  a  little  aside  too,  like  a  becoming  bonnet.^  A 
Madonna  in  decadence  she  is,  though,  for  all,  or  rather  by 
reason  of  all,  her  prettiness,  and  her  gay  soubrette's  smile; 
and  she  has  no   business  there,  neither,  for  this   is  St. 
Honore  s  porch,  not  hers ;  and  grim  and  grey  St.  Honore 
used  to  stand  there  to  receive  you, — he  is  banished  now 
to  the  north  porch,  where  nobody  ever  goes  in.    This  was 
done  long  ago,  in  the  fourteenth-century  days,  when  the 
people  first  began  to  find  Christianity  too  serious,  and  devised 
a  merrier  faith  for  France,  and  would  have  bright-glancing, 
soubrette  Madonnas  everywhere — letting  their  own  dark- eyed 
Joan  of  Arc  be  burnt  for  a  witch.     And  thenceforward. 

^  [Plate  IX.,  and  compare  p.  166.  For  another  reference  to  this  carving,  se( 
The  Two  Paths,  §  36  (Vol.  XVI.  p.  281).  In  the  same  book  is  a  descriptiou  o 
the  other  sculptures  of  the  porch  :  see  pp.  855-357  and  Plate  XVI.] 

I 

I 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


129 


lings  went  their  merry  way,  straight  on,  "9a  allait,  9a 
•a,"  to  the  merriest  days  of  the  guillotine.^ 

But  they  could  still  carve,  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
ad  the  Madonna  and  her  hawthorn-blossom  linteP  are 
^orth  your  looking  at, — much  more  the  field  above,  of 
iulpture  as  delicate  and  more  calm,  which  tells  St.  Honore  s 
wn  story,  little  talked  of  now  in  his  Parisian  faubourg. 

8.  I  will  not  keep  you  just  now  to  tell  St.  Honore's 
:ory — (only  too  glad  to  leave  you  a  little  curious  about 
,  if  it  were  possible)* — for  certainly  you  will  be  impatient 
)  go  into  the  church;  and  cannot  enter  it  to  better 
Ivantage  than  by  this  door.  For  all  cathedrals  of  any 
lark  have  nearly  the  same  effect  when  you  enter  at  the 
j  est  door ;  but  I  know  no  other  which  shows  so  much  of 
is  nobleness  from  the  south  interior  transept ;  the  opposite 
i)se  being  of  exquisite  fineness  in  tracery,  and  lovely  in 
jistre ;  and  the  shafts  of  the  transept  aisles  forming  wonder- 
!il  groups  with  those  of  the  choir  and  nave;  also,  the 
bse  shows  its  height  better,  as  it  opens  to  you  when  you 
iivance  from  the  transept  into  the  mid-nave,  than  when 
I  is  seen  at  once  from  the  west  end  of  the  nave ;  where 
is  just  possible  for  an  irreverent  person  rather  to  think 
le  nave  narrow,  than  the  apse  high.  Therefore,  if  you  let 
le  guide  you,  go  in  at  this  south  transept  door,  (and  put  a 
)u  into  every  beggar's  box  who  asks  it  there, — it  is  none 
■  your  business  whether  they  should  be  there  or  not,  nor 
hether  they  deserve  to  have  the  sou, — be  sure  only  that 
Du  yourself  deserve  to  have  it  to  give ;  and  give  it  prettily, 
jid  not  as  if  it  burnt  your  fingers).  Then,  being  once 
I  side,  take  what  first  sensation  and  general  glimpse  of  it 
[eases  you — promising  the  custode  to  come  back  to  see  it 

*  See,  however,  §§  36,  112-114  of  The  Two  Paths  [Vol.  XVI.  pp.  281, 
■5-357]. 


^  [For  the  allusion  here,  see  Fiction^  Fair  and  Foul^  §  47  and  n.  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 
I  ^  ["Less  charming,"  says  M.  Proust  in  a  note  to  his  French  translation,  "than 
at  of  Bourges,"  which  is  "the  cathedral  of  the  hawthorn" — referring  to  Stones 

Venice,  vol.  i.  ch.  2,  §  13  (Vol.  IX.  p.  70).] 

XXXIII.  1 


9 


180  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

properly;  (only  then  mind  you  keep  the  promise,)  and  in 
this  first  quarter  of  an  hour,  seeing  only  what  fancy  bids 
you — but  at  least,  as  I  said,  the  apse  from  mid-nave,  and 
all  the  traverses  of  the  building,  from  its  centre.  Then 
you  will  know,  when  you  go  outside  again,  what  the 
architect  was  working  for,  and  what  his  buttresses  and 
traceries  mean.  For  the  outside  of  a  French  cathedral, 
except  for  its  sculpture,  is  always  to  be  thought  of  as  the 
wrong  side  of  the  stuff,  in  which  you  find  how  the  threads 
go  that  produce  the  inside  or  right-side  pattern.  And  if 
you  have  no  wonder  in  you  for  that  choir  and  its  encom- 
passing circlet  of  light,  when  you  look  up  into  it  from 
the  cross-centre,  you  need  not  travel  farther  in  search  of 
cathedrals,  for  the  waiting-room  of  any  station  is  a  better 
place  for  you ; — but,  if  it  amaze  you  and  delight  you  at 
first,  then,  the  more  you  know  of  it,  the  more  it  wiU 
amaze.  For  it  is  not  possible  for  imagination  and  mathe- 
matics together,  to  do  anything  nobler  or  stronger  than 
that  procession  of  window,  with  material  of  glass  and  stone 
— nor  anything  which  shall  look  loftier,  with  so  temperate 
and  prudent  measure  of  actual  loftiness. 

9.  From  the  pavement  to  the  keystone  of  its  vault  is 
but  132  French  feet— about  150  English.  Think  only- 
you  who  have  been  in  Switzerland, — the  Staubbach  falls 
m?ie  hundred !  Nay,  Dover  chfF  under  the  castle,  just  at 
the  end  of  the  Marine  Parade,  is  twice  as  high ;  ^  and  the 
little  cockneys  parading  to  military  polka  on  the  asphalt 
below,  think  themselves  about  as  tall  as  it,  I  suppose 
— nay,  what  with  their  little  lodgings  and  stodgings  anc 
podgings  about  it,  they  have  managed  to  make  it  look  nc 
bigger  than  a  moderate-sized  limekiln.  Yet  it  is  twice  th( 
height  of  Amiens'  apse ! — and  it  takes  good  building,  witl 
only  such  bits  of  chalk  as  one  can  quarry  beside  Somme 
to  make  your  work  stand  half  that  height,  for  six  hundrec 
years. 

^  [On  the  height,  apparent  and  real,  of  cathedrals  and  mountains,  compar 
.Seven  Lamps,  ch.  iii.  §  4  (Vol  VIII.  p.  104).] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


131 


10.  It  takes  good  building,  I  say,  and  you  may  even 
iver  the  best — that  ever  was,  or  is  again  likely  for  many  a 
lay  to  be,  on  the  unquaking  and  fruitful  earth,  where  one 
^ould  calculate  on  a  pillar's  standing  fast,  once  well  set 
ip  ;  and  where  aisles  of  aspen,  and  orchards  of  apple,  and 
dusters  of  vine,  gave  type  of  what  might  be  most  beauti- 
uUy  made  sacred  in  the  constancy  of  sculptured  stone.^ 
^rom  the  unhewn  block  set  on  end  in  the  Druid's  Bethel, 
o  this  Lord's  House  and  blue-vitrailed  gate  of  Heaven,^ 
^ou  have  the  entire  course  and  consummation  of  the 
s^orthern  Religious  Builder's  passion  and  art. 

11.  But,   note   further — and   earnestly, — this    apse  of 
Imiens  is  not  only  the  best,^  but  the  very  first  thing 
|one  perfectly  in  its  manner,  by  Northern  Christendom, 
n  pages  323  and  327  of  the  sixth  volume  of  M.  VioUet-le- 
l)uc,*  you  will  find  the  exact  history  of  the  development 
|f  these  traceries  through  which  the  eastern  light  shines  on 
ou  as  you  stand,  from  the  less  perfect  and  tentative  forms 
f  Rheims :  and  so  momentary  was  the  culmination  of  the 
xact  rightness,  that  here,  from  nave  to  transept — built 
nly  ten  years  later, — there  is  a  little  change,  not  towards 
ecline,  but  to  a  not  quite  necessary  precision.^  Where 
ecline  begins,  one  cannot,  among  the  lovely  fantasies  that 
icceeded,  exactly  say— but  exactly,  and  indisputably,  we 
now  that  this  apse  of  Amiens  is  the  first  virgin  perfect 
jork — Parthenon   also  in   that   sense — of   Gothic  Archi- 
icture. 

12.  Who  built  it,  shall  we  ask?  God,  and  Man, — is 
lie  first  and  most  true  answer.  The  stars  in  their  courses 
juilt  it,  and  the  Nations.  Greek  Athena  labours  here — 
ad  Roman  Father  Jove,  and  Guardian  Mars.    The  Gaul 

^  [For  a  reference  to  tliis  passage,  see  Art  of  England,  §  128  ;  below,  p.  352  n.] 
'  [See  Genesis  xxviii.  17 ;  and  compare  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  §  62  (Vol.  XVIII. 
441).] 

'  [Compare  Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting ^  §  18  (Vol.  XII.  p.  35).] 
j  *  [Under  the  heading  ^'Meneau.'*] 

^  [On  this  point,  of  too  great  precision  in  contrast  with  variation,  see  Stones  of 
mice,  vol.  ii.  (Vol.  X.  pp.  53,  54).] 


182 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


labours  here,  and  the  Frank:  knightly  Norman, — mighty 
Ostrogoth, — and  wasted  anchorite  of  Idmnea. 

The  actual  Man  who  built  it  scarcely  cared  to  tell  you  | 
he  did  so ;  nor  do  the  historians  brag  of  him.  Any  quan- 
tity of  heraldries  of  knaves  and  faineants  you  may  find  in 
what  they  call  their  history " :  but  this  is  probably  the 
first  time  you  ever  read  the  name  of  Robert  of  Luzarches. 
I  say  he  "scarcely  cared" — we  are  not  sure  that  he  cared 
at  all.  He  signed  his  name  nowhere,  that  I  can  hear  of. 
You  may  perhaps  find  some  recent  initials  cut  by  English 
remarkable  visitors  desirous  of  immortality,  here  and  there 
about  the  edifice,  but  Robert  the  builder — or  at  least  the 
Master  of  building,  cut  his  on  no  stone  of  it.  Only  when, 
after  his  death,  the  headstone  had  been  brought  forth  with 
shouting,  Grace  unto  it,  this  following  legend  was  written, 
recording  all  who  had  part  or  lot  in  the  labour,  within  the 
middle  of  the  labyrinth  then  inlaid  in  the  pavement  of  the 
nave.  You  must  read  it  trippingly  on  the  tongue :  it  was 
rhymed  gaily  for  you  by  pure  French  gaiety,  not  the  least 
like  that  of  the  Theatre  de  Folies. 

"En  Fan  de  Grace  mil  deux  cent 
Et  vingt,  fu  I'oeuvre  de  cheens 
Premierement  encomenchie. 

A  done  y  ert  de  cheste  evesquie  ] 
Evrart,  eveque  benis  ;  a 
Et,  Roy  de  France,  Loys  ^ 

Qui  fut  fils  Phelippe  le  Sage.  ?  pit 

Qui  maistre  y  ert  de  I'oeuvre  If 
Maistre  Robert  estoit  nomes 

Et  de  Luzarches  surnomes.  f 
Maistre  Thomas  fu  apres  lui  1151 
De  Cormont.  Et  apres,  son  filz  I 
Maistre  Regnault,  qui  mestre  . 
Fist  a  chest  point  chi  cheste  lectre  ™' 
Que  I'incarnation  valoit  ,H]i 
Treize  cent,  moins  douze,  en  faloit." 

13.  I  have  written  the  numerals  in  letters,   else  the  il 
metre  would  not  have  come  clear:  they  were  really  ir  krd 
figures  thus,     ii  c.  et  xx,"  **xiii  c.  moins  xii."    I  quotf 
the   inscription   from  M.   I'Abbe    Roze's   admirable  littl( 

iiflat 

I 

I 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


138 


book,  Visite  a  la  Cathedrale  d' Amiens'^ — Sup.  Lib.  de  Mgr. 
I'Eveque  d' Amiens,  1877, — ^which  every  grateful  traveller 
{should  buy,  for  I'm  only  going  to  steal  a  little  bit  of  it 
here  and  there.  I  only  wish  there  had  been  a  translation 
of  the  legend  to  steal,  too ;  for  there  are  one  or  two  points, 
both  of  idea  and  chronology,  in  it,  that  I  should  have  liked 
the  Abbe's  opinion  of. 

The  main  purport  of  the  rhyme,  however,  we  perceive 
to  be,  line  for  line,  as  follows  : — 

In  the  year  of  Grace,  Twelve  Hundred 

And  twenty,  the  work,  then  faUing  to  ruin. 

Was  first  begun  again. 

Then  was,  of  this  Bishopric 

Everard  the  blessed  Bishop. 

And,  King  of  France,  Louis, 

Who  was  son  to  Philip  the  Wise. 

He  who  was  Master  of  the  Work 

Was  called  Master  Robert, 

And  called,  beyond  that,  of  Luzarches. 

Master  Thomas  was  after  him. 

Of  Corraont.    And  after  him,  his  son. 

Master  Reginald,  who  to  be  put 

Made — at  this  point — this  reading. 

When  the  Incarnation  was  of  account 

Thirteen  hundred,  less  twelve,  which  it  failed  of." 

In  which  legend,  while  you  stand  where  once  it  was 
written  (it  was  removed^ — to  make  the  old  pavement  more 
I  polite — in  the  year,  I  sorrowfully  observe,  of  my  own  earliest 
I  tour  on  the  Continent,  1825,  when  I  had  not  yet  turned 
my  attention  to  Ecclesiastical  Architecture),  these  points 
are  noticeable — if  you  have  still  a  little  patience. 

14.  "The  work" — ix.,  the  Work  of  Amiens  in  especial, 
I  her  cathedral,  was  decheant,"  falling  to  ruin,  for  the — I 
cannot  at  once  say — ^fourth,  fifth,  or  what  time, — in  the 
year  1220.  For  it  was  a  wonderfully  difficult  matter  for 
httle  Amiens  to  get  this  piece  of  business  fairly  done,  so 
hard  did  the  Devil  pull  against  her.    She  built  her  first 

1  [See  p.  4  of  that  little  book.] 

^  1/^ Restored"  in  its  original  place  in  1894,    The  original  central  stone,  much 
mutilated,  is  in  the  Museum  of  Amiens.] 


134 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


Bishop's  church  (scarcely  more  than  St.  Firmin's  tomb- 
chapel)  about  the  year  350,  just  outside  the  railway  station 
on  the  road  to  Paris ;  then,  after  being  nearly  herself 
destroyed,  chapel  and  all,  by  the  Frank  invasion,  having 
recovered,  and  converted  her  Franks,  she  built  another  and 
a  properly  called  cathedral,  where  this  one  stands  now, 
under  Bishop  St.  Save,  (St.  Sauve,  or  Salve).  But  even 
this  proper  cathedral  was  only  of  wood,  and  the  Normans 
burnt  it  in  881.  Rebuilt,  it  stood  for  200  years ;  but  was 
in  great  part  destroyed  by  lightning  in  1019.  Rebuilt 
again,  it  and  the  town  were  more  or  less  burnt  together 
by  lightning,  in  1107, — my  authority  says  calmly,  "un  in- 
cendie  provoque  par  la  meme  cause  detruisit  la  ville,  et 
une  partie  de  la  cathedrale."  The  "  partie "  being  rebuilt 
once  more,  the  whole  was  again  reduced  to  ashes,  "reduite 
en  cendre  par  le  feu  de  ciel  en  1218,  ainsi  que  tons  les 
titres,  les  martyrologies,  les  calendriers,  et  les  Archives  de 
I'Eveche  et  du  Chapitre." 

15.  It  was  the  fifth  cathedral,  I  count,  then,  that  lay 
in  "ashes,"  according  to  Mons.  Gilbert — in  ruin  certainly 
— decheante ; — and  ruin  of  a  very  discouraging  completeness 
it  would  have  been,  to  less  lively  townspeople — in  1218. 
But  it  was  rather  of  a  stimulating  completeness  to  Bishop 
Everard  and  his  people — the  ground  well  cleared  for  them, 
as  it  were ;  and  lightning  (feu  de  Tenfer,  not  du  ciel,  recog- 
nized for  a  diabolic  plague,  as  in  Egypt ),^  was  to  be  defied 
— to  the  pit.^  They  only  took  two  years,  you  see,  to  pull 
themselves  together ;  and  to  work  they  went,  in  1220, 
they,  and  their  bishop,  and  their  king,  and  their  Robert  of 
Luzarches.  And  this,  that  roofs  you,  was  what  their  hands 
found  to  do  with  their  might.  ^ 

*  At  St.  Acheul.  See  the  first  chapter  of  this  book  [p.  30],  and  the 
Description  Historique  de  la  Cathedrale  d' Amiens,  by  A.  P.  M.  Gilbert,  8vo, 
Amiens,  1833,  pp.  5-7. 

1  [Exodus  ix.  23.] 

^  [So  punctuated  in  Ruskin's  manuscript :  for  the  phrase,  see  Julius  Cessar, 
Act  V.  sc.  5.] 

^  [Ecclesiastes  ix.  10.] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


135 


16.  Their  king  was  "  a-donc,"  at  that  time,"  Louis 
VIII.,  who  is  especially  further  called  the  son  of  Philip  of 
August,  or  Philip  the  Wise,  because  his  father  was  not 
dead  in  1220 ;  but  must  have  resigned  the  practical  king- 
ioiii  to  his  son,  as  his  own  father  had  done  to  him ;  the  old 
md  wise  king  retiring  to  his  chamber,  and  thence  silently 
Tuiding  his  son's  hands,  very  gloriously,  yet  for  three  years. 

But,  farther — and  this  is  the  point  on  which  chiefly  I 
ivould  have  desired  the  Abbe's  judgment — Louis  VIII.  died 

fever  at  Montpensier  in  1226.  And  the  entire  conduct 
3f  the  main  labour  of  the  cathedral,  and  the  chief  glory  of 
ts  service,  as  we  shall  hear  presently,  was  Saint  Louis's ; 
or  a  time  of  forty-four  years.  And  the  inscription  was 
3ut  "  a  ce  point  ci "  by  the  last  architect,  six  years  after 
5t.  Louis's  death.  How  is  it  that  the  great  and  holy  king 
s  not  named? 

17.  I  must  not,  in  this  traveller's  brief,  lose  time  in 
jonjectural  answers  to  the  questions  which  every  step  here 
^ill  raise  from  the  ravaged  shrine.  But  this  is  a  very 
»olemn  one ;  and  must  be  kept  in  our  hearts,  till  we  may 
)erhaps  get  clue  to  it.  One  thing  only  we  are  sure  of, — 
hat  at  least  the  due  honour — alike  by  the  sons  of  Kings 
md  sons  of  Craftsmen — is  given  always  to  their  fathers; 
ind  that  apparently  the  chief  honour  of  all  is  given  here 
o  Philip  the  Wise.  From  whose  house,  not  of  parliament 
)ut  of  peace,  came,  in  the  years  when  this  temple  was 
irst  in  building,  an  edict  indeed  of  peace-making :  That 
t  should  be  criminal  for  any  man  to  take  vengeance  for 
m  insult  or  injury  till  forty  days  after  the  commission  of 
:he  offence — and  then  only  with  the  approbation  of  the 
Bishop  of  the  Diocese."  ^  Which  was  perhaps  a  wiser 
jffort  to  end  the   Feudal   system  in  its  Saxon  sense,* 

*  Feud,  Saxon  faedh,  low  Latin  Faida  (Scottish  ''fae,"  English  "foe," 
lerivative),  Johnson.  Remember  also  that  the  root  of  Feud,  in  its  Norman 
ense  of  land -allotment,  is  foi,  not  fee,  which  Johnson,  old  Tory  as  he  was, 
lid  not  observe — neither  in  general  does  the  modern  Antifeudalist. 


[The  Pictorial  History  of  France,  vol.  i.  p.  423.] 


136 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


than  any  of  our  recent  projects  for  ending  it  in  the 
Norman  one. 

18.  A  ce  point  ci."  The  point,  namely,  of  the  labyrinth 
inlaid  in  the  cathedral  floor;  a  recognized  emblem  of  many 
things  to  the  people,  who  knew  that  the  ground  they  stood 
on  was  holy,  as  the  roof  over  their  head.  Chiefly,  to ' 
them,  it  was  an  emblem  of  noble  human  life — strait-gated, 
narrow- walled,  with  infinite  darknesses  and  the  inextricabilis 
error on  either  hand — and  in  the  depth  of  it,  the  brutal 
nature  to  be  conquered.^ 

19.  This  meaning,  from  the  proudest  heroic,  and  purest 
legislative,  days  of  Greece,  the  symbol  had  borne  for  all 
men  skilled  in  her  traditions:  to  the  schools  of  craftsmen 
the  sign  meant  further  their  craft's  noblesse,  and  pure 
descent  from  the  divinely-terrestrial  skill  of  Daedalus,  the 
labyrinth- builder,  and  the  first  sculptor  of  imagery  pathetic* 
with  human  life  and  death. 

20.  Quite  the  most  beautiful  sign  of  the  power  of  true 
Christian-Catholic  faith  is  this  continual  acknowledgment 
by  it  of  the  brotherhood — nay,  more,  the  fatherhood,  of 
the  elder  nations  who  had  not  seen  Christ;  but  had  been 
filled  with  the  Spirit  of  God ;  and  obeyed,  according  to 
their  knowledge.  His  unwritten  law.  The  pure  charity 
and  humility  of  this  temper  are  seen  in  all  Christian 
art,  according  to  its  strength  and  purity  of  race ;  but 
best,  to  the  full,  seen  and  interpreted  by  the  three  great 

*  "Tu  quoque,  magnam 
Partem  opere  in  tanto,  sineret  dolor,  Icare,  haberes. 
Bis  conatus  erat  casus  effingere  in  auro, — 
Bis  patriae  cecidere  manus." 

There  is,  advisedly,  no  pathos  allowed  in  primary  sculpture.    Its  heroe 
conquer  without  exultation,  and  die  without  sorrow.^ 


*  [Virgil,  ^neid,  vi.  27  (in  the  description  of  the  labyrinth  of  Crete).  Ruskii 
in  his  note  on  §  19  quotes  further  from  the  passage  (lines  30-33).] 

2  [On  the  labyrinth,  see  Edmond  Soyez's  monograph,  Les  Labyrinthes  d'jSglises 
Labyrinthe  de  la  Cathedrale  d' Amiens  (1896),  and  compare  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  Z 
(Vol.  XXVII.  p.  401).    See  also  Lanciani's  Pagan  and  Christian  Borne,  p.  31.] 

5  [Compare  Aratra  Pentelici,  §  191  (Vol.  XX.  p.  339).] 


I 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


187 


iChristian-Heathen  poets,  Dante,  Douglas  of  Dunkeld,^  and 
George  Chapman. 

21.  The  prayer  with  which  the  last  ends  his  life's 
work^  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  the  perfectest  and  deepest 
expression  of  Natural  Religion  given  us  in  literature ;  and 
if  you  can,  pray  it  here — standing  on  the  spot  where 
|the  builder  once  wrote  the  history  of  the  Parthenon  of 
Christianity : — 

"I  pray  thee,  Lord,  the  Father,  and  the  Guide  of  our  reason,  that  we 
imay  remember  the  nobleness  with  which  Thou  hast  adorned  us ;  and  that 
jrhou  would'st  be  always  on  our  right  hand  and  on  our  left,*]-  in  the  motion 
!of  our  own  Wills :  that  so  we  may  be  purged  from  the  contagion  of  the 
IBody  and  the  Affections  of  the  Brute,  and  overcome  them  and  rule ;  and 
jjse,  as  it  becomes  men  to  use,  them,  for  instruments.  And  then,  that 
jThou  would'st  be  in  Fellowship  with  us  for  the  careful  correction  of  our 
•eason,  and  for  its  conjunction  by  the  light  of  truth  with  the  things  that 
cruly  are. 

"  And  in  the  third  place,  I  pray  to  Thee,  the  Saviour,  that  thou  would'st 
utterly  cleanse  away  the  closing  gloom  from  the  eyes  of  our  souls,  that  we 
may  know  well  who  is  to  be  held  for  God,  and  who  for  Mortal.    Amen."  J 

22.  And  having  prayed  this  prayer,  or  at  least,  read  it 
with  honest  wishing,  (which  if  you  cannot,  there  is  no  hope 

*  See  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  61.^ 

f  Thus,  the  command  to  the  children  of  Israel  ''that  they  go  for- 
ward"^ is  to  their  own  wills.  They  obeying,  the  sea  retreats,  but  not 
hefore  they  dare  to  advance  into  it.  Then,  the  waters  are  a  wall  unto 
:hem,  on  their  right  hand  and  their  left. 

J  The  original  is  written  in  Latin  only.  ''Supplico  tibi,  Domine,  Pater 
et  Dux  rationis  nostrae,  ut  nostras  Nobilitatis  recordemur,  qua  tu  nos  or- 
aasti :  et  ut  tu  nobis  presto  sis,  ut  iis  qui  per  sese  moventur ;  ut  et  a  Cor- 
poris contagio,  Brutorumque  affectuum  repurgemur,  eosque  superemus,  atque 
jregamus;  et,  sicut  decet,  pro  instrumentis  iis  utamur.  Deinde,  ut  nobis 
ladjuncto  sis ;  ad  accuratam  rationis  nostrae  correctionem,  et  conjunctionem 
cum  iis  qui  vere  sunt,  per  lucem  veritatis.  Et  tertium,  Salvatori  supplex 
joro,  ut  ab  oculis  animorum  nostrorum  caliginem  prorsus  abstergas ;  ut  nori- 
jmuR  bene,  qui  Deus,  aut  Mortalis  habendus.  Amen." 

^  [The  prayer  is  to  be  found  on  the  last  page  of  The  Crowne  of  all  Homers 
Workes :  BatrachomyomacMa,  or  the  Battaile  of  Frogs  and  Mice,  His  Hymns  and 
Epigrams,  translated  according  to  the  originall  hy  George  Chapman.  A  copy  of  this 
rare  hook  (printed  about  1624)  is  in  the  Ruskin  Museum  at  Sheffield.] 

'  [Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  500  ;  and  compare,  above,  p.  119.  For  other  references  to 
Chapman,  see  Vol.  XV.  p.  226  ;  Vol.  XXV.  p.  275  ;  and  The  Storm  Cloud,  §  55 
[Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

'  [Exodus  xiv.  15.] 


138 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


of  your  at  present  taking  pleasure  in  any  human  work  ofi 
large  faculty,  whether  poetry,  painting,  or  sculpture,)  we 
may  walk  a  little  farther  westwards  down  the  nave,  where,  I 
in  the  middle  of  it,  but  only  a  few  yards  from  its  end,  two 
flat  stones  (the  custode  will  show  you  them),  one  a  little 
farther  back  than  the  other,  are  laid  over  the  graves  of  thej 
two  great  bishops,  all  whose  strength  of  life  was  given,  withi 
the  builders,  to  raise  this  temple.    Their  actual  graves  havej 
not  been  disturbed ;  but  the  tombs  raised  over  them,  once  i 
and  again  removed,  are  now  set  on  your  right  and  lefti 
hand  as  you  look  back  to  the  apse,  under  the  third  arch! 
between  the  nave  and  aisles. 

23.  Both  are  of  bronze,  cast  at  one  flow — and  with  in-j 
superable,  in  some  respects  inimitable,  skill  in  the  caster's  art. 

"  Chef'd'ceuvres  de  fonte, — le  tout  fondu  d'un  seul  jet, 
et  admirablement."      There  are  only  two  other  such  tombs  I 
left  in  France,  those  of  the  children  of  St.  Louis.  All 
others  of  their  kind — and  they  were  many  in  every  great, 
cathedral  of  France — were  first  torn  from  the  graves  they  ' 
covered,  to  destroy  the   memory  of  France's  dead;  and 
then  melted  down  into  sous  and  centimes,  to  buy  gun- 
powder and  absinthe  with  for  her  living, — by  the  Progressive 
Mind  of  Civilization  in  her  first  blaze  of  enthusiasm  andj 
new  light,  from  1789  to  1800.  v. 

The  children's  tombs,  one  on  each  side  of  the  altar  of? 
St.  Denis,  are  much  smaller  than  these,  though  wrought 
more  beautifully.    These  beside  you   are   the   only  two 
Bronze  tovibs  of  her  Men   of  the  great   ages,  left  in 
France ! 

24.  And  they  are  the  tombs  of  the  pastors  of  her. 
people,  who  built  for  her  the  first  perfect  temple  to  herj 

*  Viollet-le-Duc,  vol.  viii.  p.  256.  He  adds:  "  L'une  d'elles  esti 
comme  art "  (meaning  general  art  of  sculpture),  "  un  monument  du  premier  ^ 
ordre ; "  but  this  is  only  partially  true — also  I  find  a  note  in  M.  Gilbert's?; 
account  of  them,  p.  126:  "  Les  deux  doigts  qui  manquent,  a  la  main  droitej 
de  I'eveque  Gaudefroi  paraissent  etre  un  defaut  survenu  a  la  fonte."  Sec: 
further,  on  these  monuments,  and  those  of  St.  Louis's  children,  Viollet-le- 
Due,  vol.  ix.  pp.  61,  62. 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


139 


od.  The  Bishop  Everard's  is  on  your  right,  and  has 
( igraved  round  the  border  of  it  this  inscription :  ^ — 

Who  fed  the  people,  who  laid  the  foundations  of  this 

Structure,  to  whose  care  the  City  was  given, 
Here,  in  ever-breathing  balm  of  fame,  rests  Everard. 

A  man  compassionate  to  the  afflicted,  the  widow's  protector,  the  orphan's 
Guardian.    Whom  he  could,  he  recreated  with  gifts. 

To  words  of  men. 
If  gentle,  a  lamb ;  if  violent,  a  lion ;  if  proud,  biting  steel." 


*  I  steal  again  from  the  Abbe  Roze  ^  the  two  inscriptions, — with  his 
i  .roductory  notice  of  the  evilly-inspired  interference  with  them. 

"La  tombe  d'Evrard  de  Fouilloy,  (died  1222),  coulee  en  bronze  en 
]}in-relief,  etait  supportee,  des  le  principe,  par  des  monstres  engages  dans 
le  ma9onnerie  remplissant  le  dessous  du  monument,  pour  indiquer  que 
<  :  eveque  avait  pose  les  fonderaents  de  la  Cathedrale.  Un  architecte  mal- 
i  ireusement  inspire  a  ose  arracher  la  ma9onnerie,  pour  qu'on  ne  vit  plus  la 
iiin  du  prelat  fondateur,  a  la  base  de  I'edifice. 

"On  lit,  sur  la  bordure,  I'inscription  suivante  en  beaux  caracteres  du 
:  IP  siecle : 

"'Qui  populum  pavit,  qui  fundameta  locavit 
Huius  structure,  cuius  fuit  urbs  data  cure 
Hie  redolens  nardus,  fama  requiescit  Ewardus, 
Vir  pius  afflictis,  vidvis  tutela,  relictis 
Gustos,  quos  poterat  recreabat  munere ;  vbis, 
MitiS  agnus  erat,  tumidis  leo,  lima  supbis.' 

"Geoffroy  d'Eu  (died  1237)  est  represente  comme  son  predecesseur  en 
l  ^its  episcopaux,  mais  le  dessous  du  bronze  supporte  par  des  chimeres  est 
i  de,  ce  prelat  ayant  eleve  I'edifice  jusqu'aux  voutes.    Voici  la  legende 
,   ^  ivee  sur  la  bordure  : 

"'Ecce  premunt  humile  Gaufridi  membra  cubile. 
I  Seu  minus  aut  simile  nobis  parat  omnibus  ille; 

Quem  laurus  gemina  decoraverat,  medicina 
Lege  qii  divina,  decuerunt  cornua  bina ; 
Clare  vir  Augensis,  quo  sedes  Ambianensis 
Crevit  in  imensis ;  in  coelis  auctus.  Amen,  sis.' 

J  ut  est  a  etudier  dans  ces  deux  monuments :  tout  y  est  d'un  haut 
i  eret,  quant  au  dessin,  a  la  sculpture,  a  I'agencement  des  ornements  et 
Cj  draperies." 

In  saying  above  [§  2,  p.  122]  that  Geoffroy  of  Eu  returned  thanks  in 
,  t;  Cathedral  for  its  completion,  I  meant  only  that  he  had  brought  at 
1'  st  the  choir  into  condition  for  service :  "  Jusqu'aux  voutes "  may  or  may 
I  ;  mean  that  the  vaulting  was  closed. 

f 

*  [Visife  d  la  Cathedrale  W Amiens,  pp.  37,  38  :  see  above,  p.  133.] 


140 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


English,  at  its  best,  in  Elizabethan  days,  is  a  nobki 
language  than  ever  Latin  was;  but  its  virtue  is  in  colou 
and  tone,  not  in  what  may  be  called  metallic  or  crystallint 
condensation.^    And  it  is  impossible  to  translate  the  las 
line  of  this  inscription  in  as  few  English  words.    Note  i 
it  first  that  the  Bishop's  friends  and  enemies  are  spoken  c 
as  in  word,  not  act ;  because  the  swelling,  or  mocking 
or  flattering,  words  of  men  are  indeed  what  the  meek  c| 
the  earth  must  know  how  to  bear  and  to  welcome; — ^theij 
deeds,  it  is  for  kings  and  knights  to  deal  with:  not  bi 
that  the  Bishops  often  took  deeds  in  hand  also ;  and  i 
actual  battle  they  were  permitted  to  strike  with  the  mac< 
but  not  with  sword  or  lance — i.e.,  not  to  "shed  blood" 
For  it  was  supposed  that  a  man  might  always  recover  froi 
a  mace-blow;  (which,  however,  would  much  depend  on  tl 
bishop's  mind  who  gave  it).    The  battle  of  Bou vines,  qui1 
one  of  the  most  important  in  mediaeval  history,  was  wo 
against  the  English,  and  against  odds  besides  of  German 
under  their  Emperor  Otho,  by  two  French  bishops  (Senl 
and  Bayeux) — who  both  generalled  the  French  King's  lin 
and  led  its  charges.    Our  Earl  of  Salisbury  surrendered  t 
the  Bishop  of  Bayeux  in  person. 

25.  Note  farther,  that  quite  one  of  the  deadliest  ar 
most  diabolic  powers  of  evil  words,  or,  rightly  so  calle 
blasphemy,  has  been  developed  in  modern  days  in  the  effe 
of  sometimes  quite  innocently  meant  and  enjoyed  slang 
There  are  two  kinds  of  slang,  in  the  essence  of  it:  oi 
"  Thieves'  Latin " — the  special  language  of  rascals,  used  f 
concealment ;  the  other,  one  might  perhaps  best  call  Lou1 
Latin ! — the  lowering  or  insulting  words  invented  by  vi 
persons  to  bring  good  things,  in  their  own  estimates, 
their  own  level,  or  beneath  it.  The  really  worst  pow 
of  this  kind  of  blasphemy^  is  in  its  often  making  it  impc 
sible  to  use  plain  words  without  a  degrading  or  ludicro 

^  [On  this  character  of  the  Latin  language,  compare  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter 
(VoL  XXVII.  p.  27).] 
^  [Genesis  ix.  6.] 

»  On  this  word,  see  The  Sto^-m-Cloud,  §  80  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 


■j 
i 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


141 


itached  sense: — thus  I  could  not  end  my  translation  of 
tis  epitaph,  as  the  old  Latinist  could,  with  the  exactly 
{ curate  image:  **to  the  proud,  a  file" — because  of  the 
ruse  of  the  word  in  lower  English,  retaining,  however, 
(lite  shrewdly,  the  thirteenth-century  idea.  But  the  exact 
irce  of  the  symbol  here  is  in  its  allusion  to  jewellers' 
Drkj  filing  down  facets.  A  proud  man  is  often  also  a 
]  ecious  one :  and  may  be  made  brighter  in  surface,  and 
1e  purity  of  his  inner  self  shown,  by  good  filing, 

26.  Take  it  all  in  all,  the  perfect  duty  of  a  Bishop^  is 
(pressed  in  these  six  Latin  lines, — au  mieux  mieux — 
1  ginning  with  his  pastoral  office — Feed  my  sheep  ^ — qui 
i  vit  populum.  And  be  assured,  good  reader,  these  ages 
i:ver  could  have  told  you  what  a  Bishop's,  or  any  other 
lan's,  duty  was,  unless  they  had  each  man  in  his  place 
lith  done  it  well — and  seen  it  well  done.  The  Bishop 
leoffroy's  tomb  is  on  your  left,  and  its  inscription  is: 

"Behold,  the  limbs  of  Godfrey  press  their  lowly  bed. 
Whether  He  is  preparing  for  us  all  one  less  than,  or  like  it. 
Whom  the  twin  laurels  adorned,  in  medicine 
And  in  divine  law,  the  dual  crests  became  him. 
Bright-shining  man  of  Eu,  by  whom  the  throne  of  Amiens 
Rose  into  immensity,  be  thou  increased  in  Heaven. 

Amen." 

And  now  at  last — this  reverence  done  and  thanks  paid 
-we  will  turn  from  these  tombs,  and  go  out  at  one  of 

Tie  western  doors — and  so  see  gradually  rising  above  us 
le  immensity  of  the  three  porches,  and  of  the  thoughts 

'igraved  in  them. 

j  27.  What  disgrace  or  change  has  come  upon  them,  I 
ill  not  tell  you  to-day^ — except  only  the  immeasurable '^ 
ss  of  the  great  old  foundation-steps,  open,  sweeping  broad 
om  side  to  side  for  all  who  came ;  un walled,  undivided, 
iinned  all  along  by  the  westering  day,  lighted  only  by  the 

1  [For  which  duty,  see  Sesame  and  Lilies,  §  22  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  72).] 

2  {John  xxi.  16.] 

'  [A  full  historical  account  will  be  found  in  M.  Durand's  Monographie  de  V^glise 
D.  Cathedrale  d' Amiens,  vol.  i.  pp.  156-194.] 


142  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


moon  and  the  stars  at  night;  falling  steep  and  many  down 
the  hillside — ceasing  one  by  one,  at  last  wide  and  few 
towards  the  level — and  worn  by  pilgrim  feet,  for  six  hun- 
dred years.  So  I  once  saw  them,  and  twice,^ — such  things 
can  now  be  nev^er  seen  more. 

Nor  even  of  the  west  front  itself,  above,  is  much  of' 
the  old  masonry  left:  but  in  the  porches,  nearly  all,— 
except  the  actual  outside  facing,  with  its  rose  moulding,  of 
which  only  a  few  flowers  have  been  spared  here  and  there.* 
But  the  sculpture  has  been  carefully  and  honourably  kept 
and  restored  to  its  place — pedestals  or  niches  restored  here 
and  there  with  clay ;   or  some  which  you  see  white  and  i, 
crude,  re-carved  entirely;  nevertheless  the  impression  you  |i 
may  receive  from  the  whole  is  still  what  the  builder  meant;  ^* 
and  I  will  tell  you  the  order  of  its  theology  without  further 
notices  of  its  decay.  j 

28.  You  will  find  it  always  well,  in  looking  at  any 
cathedral,  to  make  your  quarters  of  the  compass  sure,  in 
the  beginning;  and  to  remember  that,  as  you  enter  it,  you 
are  looking  and  advancing  eastward ;  and  that  if  it  has 
three  entrance  porches,  that  on  your  left  in  entering  is  the 
northern,  that  on  your  right  the  southern.  I  shall  endeavour 
in  all  my  future  writing  of  architecture,  to  observe  the 
simple  law  of  always  calling  the  door  of  the  north  transept 
the  north  door ;  and  that  on  the  same  side  of  the  west 
front,  the  northern  door,  and  so  of  their  opposites.  This 
will  save,  in  the  end,  much  printing  and  much  confusion, 
for  a  Gothic  cathedral  has,  almost  always,  these  five  great 
entrances ;  which  may  be  easily,  if  at  first  attentively,  i 
recognized  under  the  titles  of  the  Central  door  (or  porch),  f 
the  Northern  door,  the  Southern  door,  the  North  door, 
and  the  South  door.  |  || 

*  The  horizontal  lowest  part  of  the  moulding  between  the  northern 
and  central  porch  is  old.  Compare  its  roses  with  the  new  ones  running 
round  the  arches  above — and  you  will  know  what  "Restoration"  means. 


^  [In  his  early  visits,  1844,  1848.] 


XI 


"  Rtiskia 


Tilc  XortJierij  Porch  i)cfore  Rt^storatioii 

(iH  5  (i ; 


i 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


143 


But  when  we  use  the  terms  right  and  left,  we  ought 
jlways  to  use  them  as  in  going  out  of  the  cathedral  or 
j/alking  down  the  nave, — ^the  entire  north  side  and  aisles 
|f  the  building  being  its  right  side,  and  the  south,  its  left, 
-these  terms  being  only  used  well  and  authoritatively, 
r^hen  they  have  reference  either  to  the  image  of  Christ  in 
be  apse  or  on  the  rood,  or  else  to  the  central  statue, 
'hether  of  Christ,  the  Virgin,  or  a  saint,  in  the  west  front, 
kt  Amiens,  this  central  statue,  on  the  "  trumeau "  or  sup- 
orting  and  dividing  pillar  of  the  central  porch,  is  of 
!hrist  Immanuel, — God  with  us.^  On  His  right  hand  and 
lis  left,  occupying  the  entire  walls  of  the  central  porch, 
re  the  apostles  and  the  four  greater  prophets.  The  twelve 
linor  prophets  stand  side  by  side  on  the  front,  three  on 
ich  of  its  great  piers.^ 

The  northern  porch  is  dedicated  to  St.  Firmin,  the  first 
'hristian  missionary  to  Amiens.^ 

The  southern  porch,  to  the  Virgin. 

But  these  are  both  treated  as  withdrawn  behind  the 
reat  foundation  of  Christ  and  the  Prophets ;  and  their 
arrow  recesses  partly  conceal  their  sculpture,  until  you 
fiter  them.  What  you  have  first  to  think  of,  and  read,  is 
le  scripture  of  the  great  central  porch,  and  the  facade 
self. 

29.  You  have  then  in  the  centre  of  the  front,  the  image 
f  Christ  Himself,  receiving  you :  "I  am  the  Way,  the 
•uth  and  the  life."*  And  the  order  of  the  attendant 
owers  may  be  best  understood  by  thinking  of  them  as 
laced  on  Christ's  right  and  left  hand:  this  being  also  the 
rder  which  the  builder  adopts  in  his  Scripture  history  on 
le  facade — so  that  it  is  to  be  read  from  left  to  right — 
e,  from  Christ's  left  to  Christ's  right,  as  He  sees  it. 
'hus,  therefore,  following  the  order  of  the  great  statues : 

*  [Matthew  i.  23.] 

*  [See  the  Plan  of  the  Porches  (Plate  XII.).] 

*  See  above,  p.  29.] 

*  [John  xiv.  60.] 


144 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


first  in  the  central  porch,  there  are  six  apostles  on  Christ's; 
right  hand,  and  six  on  His  left.  On  His  left  hand,  next! 
Him,  Peter;  then  in  receding  order,  Andrew,  James,  John,] 
Matthew,  Simon ;  on  His  right  hand,  next  Him,  Paul ;  and' 
in  receding  order,  James  the  Bishop,  Philip,  Bartholomew,! 
Thomas,  and  Jude.  These  opposite  ranks  of  the  Apostlesj 
occupy  what  may  be  called  the  apse  or  curved  bay  of  the 
porch,  and  form  a  nearly  semicircular  group,  clearly  visible 
as  we  approach.  But  on  the  sides  of  the  porch,  outside 
the  lines  of  apostles,  and  not  seen  clearly  till  we  enterj 
the  porch,  are  the  four  greater  prophets.  On  Christ's  leftjl 
Isaiah  and  Jeremiah;  on  His  right,  Ezekiel  and  Daniel.  I 

30.  Then  in  front,  along  the  whole  fa9ade  —  read  in 
order  from  Christ's  left  to  His  right — come  the  series 
of  the  twelve  minor  prophets,  three  to  each  of  the  four 
piers  of  the  temple,  beginning  at  the  south  angle  with 
Hosea,  and  ending  with  Malachi. 

As  you  lock  full  at  the  facade  m  front,  the  statues 
which  fill  the  minor  porches  are  either  obscured  in  their 
narrower  recesses  or  withdrawn  behind  each  other  so  as 
to  be  unseen.  And  the  entire  mass  of  the  front  is  seen 
literally,  as  built  on  the  foundation  of  the  Apostles  and 
Prophets,  Jesus  Christ  Himself  being  the  chief  corner-stone. 
Literally  that;  for  the  receding  Porch  is  a  deep  "angulus,' 
and  its  mid-pillar  is  the    Head  of  the  Corner." 

Built  on  the  foundation  of  the  Apostles  and  Prophets 
that  is  to  say  of  the  Prophets  who  foretold  Christ,  and  the 
Apostles  who  declared  him.  Though  Moses  was  an  Apostlelj 
of  God,  he  is  not  here — though  Elijah  was  a  Prophet,  of 
God,  he  is  not  here.  The  voice  of  the  entire  building  ij 
that  of  the  Heaven  at  the  Transfiguration,  "This  is  my 
beloved  Son,  hear  ye  Him." 

31.  There  is  yet  another  and  a  greater  prophet  still 
who,  as  it  seems  at  first,  is  not  here.  Shall  the  peopk 
enter  the  gates  of  the  temple,  singing  "  Hosanna  to  th( 

1  [Ephesians  ii.  20.    And  for  the  other  Bible  references  in  this  and  the  nex 
paragraphs,  see  Matthew  xvii.  5,  xxi.  7 ;  Revelation  xxii.  16.] 


CO  05 


o 


<4-l 

O 


c 

P-, 
N 

CD 


(TJ 

X 


1 
I 

1 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


145 


[  »n  of  David " ;  and  see  no  image  of  His  father,  then  ? — 
(jirist  Himself  declare,  "  I  am  the  root  and  the  offspring 
[|  David " ;  and  yet  the  Root  have  no  sign  near  it  of  its 
ijirth  ? 

Not  so.  David  and  his  Son  are  together.  David  is 
te  pedestal  of  the  Christ. 

32.  We  w^ill  begin  our  examination  of  the  Temple  front, 
tjerefore,  with  this  its  goodly  pedestal  stone.^  The  statue 
:i  David  is  only  two-thirds  life-size,  occupying  the  niche 

1  front  of  the  pedestal.  He  holds  his  sceptre  in  his  right 
[nd,  the  scroll  in  his  left.  King  and  Prophet,  type  of  all 
livinely  right  doing,  and  right  claiming,  and  right  pro- 
:  liming,  kinghood,  for  ever. 

The  pedestal  of  which  this  statue  forms  the  fronting  or 
i  istern  sculpture,  is  square,  and  on  the  two  sides  of  it  are 
t  o  flowers  in  vases,  on  its  north  side  the  lily,  and  on  its 
i  ith  the  rose.  And  the  entire  monolith  is  one  of  the 
[[blest  pieces  of  Christian  sculpture  in  the  world, 
j  Above  this  pedestal  comes  a  minor  one,  bearing  in  front 

it  a  tendril  of  vine  which  completes  the  floral  symbolism 
:|  the  whole.  The  plant  which  I  have  called  a  lily  is  not 
tje  Fleur  de  Lys,  nor  the  Madonna's,  but  an  ideal  one 
iith  bells  like  the  crown  Imperial  (Shakespeare's  type  of 
jilies  of  all  kinds''),^  representing  the  mode  of  gi^owth  of 
tie  lily  of  the  valley,  which  could  not  be  sculptured  so 
I  ge  in  its  literal  form  without  appearing  monstrous,  and 
i  exactly  expressed  in  this  tablet — as  it  fulfils,  together 
'  th  the  rose  and  vine,  its  companions,  the  triple  saying 
:  Christ,  "  I  am  the  Rose  of  Sharon,  and  the  Lily  of  the 
'lUey."    "I  am  the  true  Vine.'" 

83.  On  the  side  of  the  upper  stone  are  supporters  of  a 
:  fFerent  character.  Supporters, — not  captives  nor  victims ; 
:e  Cockatrice  and  Adder.    Representing  the  most  active 

^  [Plate  XIII.  ;  on  which  are  united  the  three  photographs  numbered  1-3  on 
Lskin's  list  (below,  p.  179).] 

2  [Winters  Tale,  Act  iv.  sc.  3:  quoted  also  in  Vol.  XIX.  p.  373.] 
^  [Song  of  Solomon  ii.  1 ;  John  xv.  1.] 

XXXIII.  K 


146 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


evil  principles  of  the  earth,  as  in  their  utmost  malignity] 
still,  Pedestals  of  Christ,  and  even  in  their  deadly  life 
accomplishing  His  final  will/ 

Both  creatures  are  represented  accurately  in  the  medisevai 
traditional  form,  the  cockatrice  half  dragon,  half  cock;  the 
deaf  adder  ^  laying  one  ear  against  the  ground  and  stopping 
the  other  with  her  tail. 

The  first  represents  the  infidelity  of  Pride.  The  cocka- 
trice— king  serpent  or  highest  serpent — saying  that  he  it 
God,  and  will  be  God. 

The  second,  the  infidelity  of  Death.  The  adder  (niedei 
or  nether  snake  ^)  saying  that  he  is  mud,  and  will  be  mud. 

34.  Lastly,  and  above  all,  set  under  the  feet  of  the^ 
statue  of  Christ  Himself,  are  the  lion  and  dragon;  thJ 
images  of  Carnal  sin,  or  Human  sin,  as  distinguished  froii| 
the  Spiritual  and  Intellectual  sin  of  Pride,  by  which  th(| 
angels  also  fell.*  \ 

To  desire  kingship  rather  than  servantship — the  Cockai 
trice's  sin;  or  deaf  Death  rather  than  hearkening  Life — ^thij 
Adder's  sin, — these  are  both  possible  to  all  the  intelligence! 
of  the  universe.    But  the  distinctively  Human  sins,  ange 
and  lust,  seeds  in  our  race  of  their  perpetual  sorrow — ChrisI 
in  His  own  humanity,  conquered;  and  conquers  in  Hi;, 
disciples.    Therefore  His  foot  is  on  the  heads  of  these;  am 
the  prophecy,     Inculcabis  super  Leonem  et  Aspidem,"^  i 
recognized  always  as  fulfilled  in  Him,  and  in  all  His  tru 
servants,  according  to  the  height  of  their  authority,  an 
the  truth  of  their  power.  i 

35.  In  this  mystic  sense,  Alexander  III.  used  the  word'' 

^  [Here  the  MS.  adds  a  note  : — 

"This  was  what  Wordsworth  meant,  if  he  had  heen  careful  in  h 
rhyming  to  say  what  he  meant,  in  the  passage  quoted  hy  Cyron." 
The  reference  is  to  Don  Juan,  viii.  5,  where  Byron  quotes  Wordsv,  orth's  Thank 
giving  Ode  (1816).    See  Ruskm's  discussion  of  the  passage  in  Fiction.  Fair  and  Foi 
§  57  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

'  [Psalms  Iviii.  4  :  compare  The  Three  Colours  of  Pre-Raphaelitism,  §  3 
(Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

3  [Compare  Deucalion,  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  803  ;  but  Ruskin's  etymology  is 
accepted  by  the  best  authorities.] 

*  [Henry  VIIL,  Act  iii.  sc.  2,  line  441 ;  and  see  Isaiah  xiv.  12  seq.l 
^  [Psalms  xci.  13.] 


I 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


147 


I  restoring  peace  to  Italy,  and  giving  forgiveness  to  her 
sadliest  enemy,  under  the  porch  of  St.  Mark's.^    But  the 
leaning  of  every  act,  as  of  every  art,  of  the  Christian 
res,  lost  now  for  three  hundred  years,  cannot  but  be  in 
ir  own  times  read  reversed,  if  at  all,  through  the  counter- 
)irit  which  we  now  have  reached;  glorifying  Pride  and 
varice  as  the  virtues  by  which  all  things  move  and  have 
leir  being — walking  after  our  own  lusts  ^  as  our  sole  guides 
salvation,  and  foaming  out  our  own  shame  for  the  sole 
irthly  product  of  our  hands  and  lips. 
36.  Of  the  statue  of  Christ,  itself,  I  wiU  not  speak  here 
any  length,  as  no  sculpture  would  satisfy,  or  ought  to 
tisfy,  the  hope  of  any  loving  soul  that  has  learned  to 
list  in  Him ;  but  at  the  time  it  was  beyond  what  till 
en  had  been  reached  in  sculptured  tenderness;  and  was 
liown  far  and  near  as  the  "Beau  Dieu  d'Amiens."  t  Yet 
iderstood,  observe,  just  as  clearly  to  be  no  more  than 
symbol  of  the  Heavenly  Presence,  as  the  poor  coiling 
3rms  below  were  no  more  than  symbols  of  the  demoniac 
les.    No  idol,  in  our  sense  of  the  word— only  a  letter,  or 
of  the  Living  Spirit, — which,  however,  was  indeed 
nceived  by  every  worshipper  as  here  meeting  him  at  the 
inple  gate:  the  Word  of  Life,  the  King  of  Glory,^  and 
e  Lord  of  Hosts. 
"Dominus  Virtutum,"  "Lord  of  Virtues," J  is  the  best 
igle  rendering  of  the  idea  conveyed  to  a  well-taught 

*  See  my  abstract  of  the  history  of  Barbarossa  and  Alexander,  in 
iction,  Fair  and  Foul/*  Nineteenth  Century,  November  1880,  pp.  752  seq.^ 
f  See  account,  and  careful  drawing  of  it,  in  VioUet-le-Duc— article 
hrist,"  Diet,  of  Architectiire,  iii.  245. 

%  See  the  circle  of  the  Powers  of  the  Heavens  in  the  Byzantilie  ren- 
ding. I.  Wisdom;  II.  Thrones;  III.  Dominations;  IV.  Angels;  V.  Arch- 
ajels;  VI.  Virtues;  VII.  Potentates;  VIII. -.Fnnces ;  IX.  Seraphim.  In 
tl  Gregorian  order,  (Dante,  Par.,  xxviii.,  Car}'s  note,)  the  Angels  and 
^ihangels  are  separated,  giving  altogether  nine  orders,  but  not  ranks. 
^te  that  in  the  Byzantine  circle  the  cherubim  are  first,  and  that  it  is 
tl  strength  of  the  Virtues  which  calls  on  the  dead  to  rise  {St.  Mark's 
§§  95,  157  4). 


^  [Jude  16.]  2  [Psalms  xxiv.] 

'  [See  now  §§  81-90  (Vol.  XXXIV.).]         «  [Vol.  XXIV.  pp.  284,  332.] 


148  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

disciple  in  the  thirteenth  century  by  the  words  of  th 
twenty-fourth  Psalm. 

37.  Under  the  feet  of  His  apostles,  therefore,  in  th^ 
quatrefoil  medallions  of  the  foundation,  are  represented  tht 
virtues  which  each  Apostle  taught,  or  in  his  life  manifested 
— it  may  have  been,  sore  tried,  and  failing  in  the  ver 
strength  of  the  character  which  he  afterwards  perfectedi 
Thus  St.  Peter,  denying  in  fear,  is  afterwards  the  ApostlJ 
of  courage ;  and  St.  John,  who,  with  his  brother,  would  hav 
burnt  the  inhospitable  village,^  is  afterwards  the  Apostle  c 
love.  Understanding  this,  you  see  that  in  the  sides  of  th' 
porch,  the  apostles  with  their  special  virtues  stand  thus  i 
opposite  ranks. 


St.  Paul, 

St.  James  the  Bishop, 

St.  Philip, 

St.  Bartholomew, 

St.  Thomas, 

St.  Jude, 


Faith. 

Hope. 

Charity. 

Chastity. 

Wisdom. 


Courage, 
Patience, 
Gentillesse, 
Love, 

Obedience, 


St.  Peter. 
St.  Andrew. 
St.  James. 
St.  John. 
St.  Matthew. 


Humility.     Perseverance,     St.  Simon. 


Now  you  see  how  these  virtues  answer  to  each  other 
their  opposite  ranks.    Remember  the  left-hand  side  is  alwa 
the  first,  and  see  how  the  left-hand  virtues  lead  to  t. 
right-hand — 


Courage 
Patience 
Gentillesse 
Love 

Obedience 
Perseverance 


to  Faith, 

to  Hope, 

to  Charity, 

to  Chastity, 

to  Wisdom, 

to  Humility. 


38.  Note  farther  that  the  Apostles  are  all  tranquil,  neaY 
all  with  books,  some  with  crosses,  but  all  with  the  sais 
message, — Peace  be  to  this  house.  And  if  the  Son  f 
Peace  be  there,"  ^  etc.  '" 


*  The  modern  slang  name  for  a  priest,  among  the  mob  of  France  is 
a  "Pax  Vobiscum,"  or  shortly,  a  Vobiscum. 

^  [Luke  ix.  54:  for  Peter's  ''denying  in  fear/'  see  Matthew  xxvi. ;  for  is 
courage,  Acts  i.  15,  ii.  14,  iv.  13,  etc.]  j 
2  [Luke  X.  6.] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


149 


But  the  Prophets — all  seeking,  or  wistful,  or  tormented, 
wondering,  or  praying,  except  only  Daniel.    The  most 
mented  is  Isaiah;  spiritually  sawn  asunder.    No  scene 
his  martyrdom  below,  but  his  seeing  the  Lord  in  His 
aple,  and  yet  feeling  he  had  unclean  Ups.^    Jeremiah  also 
ries  his  cross— but  more  serenely. 

39.  And  now  I  give,  in  clear  succession,  the  order  of 
tj  statues  of  the  whole  front,  with  the  subjects  of  the 
atrefoils  beneath  each  of  them,  marking  the  upper  quatre- 
l  A,  the  lower  b.  The  six  prophets  who  stand  at  the 
^les  of  the  porches,  Amos,  Obadiah,  Micah,  Nahum, 
phaniah,  and  Haggai,  have  each  of  them  four  quatrefoils, 
rked,  A  and  c  the  upper  ones,  b  and  d  the  lower.^ 
Beginning,  then,  on  the  left-hand  side  of  the  central 
rch,  and  reading  outwards,  you  have^ — 


1.  St.  Peter.  4.  St.  John. 

A.  Courage.  a.  Love. 

B.  Cowardice.  b.  Discord. 

2.  St.  Andrew.  5.  St.  Matthew. 

A.  Patience.  a.  Obedience. 

b.  Anger.  b.  Rebellion. 

3.  St.  James.  6.  St.  Simon. 

A.  Gentillesse.  a.  Perseverance. 

B.  Churlishness.  b.  Atheism. 

)w,  right-hand  side  of  porch,  reading  outwards: 

7.  St.  Paul.  8.  St.  James,  Bishop. 

A.  Faith.  A.  Hope. 

B.  Idolatry.  b.  Despair. 


^  [Isaiah  vi.  5 :  compare  Ruskin's  commentary  on  the  passage  in  Fors  Clavigera, 
ter  45  (Vol.  XXVIII.  pp.  145-146).] 

[See  the  Plan  (Plate  XII.),  where  the  place  of  the  additional  quatrefoils  in 
case  of  these  "angle"  prophets  is  now  marked  with  an  asterisk  ''19*,"  etc.] 
^  [M.  Durand  (vol.  i.  p.  330)  gives  a  different  interpretation  of  the  disciples.  For 

5  he  gives  St.  Simon  or  St.  Jude ;  for  No.  6,  St.  Bartholomew ;  for  No.  9, 
Thomas;  No.  10,  St.  Matthew;  No.  11,  St.  Philip;  and  No.  12,  St.  Simon  or 
Jude.] 


« 


150  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

9.  St.  Philip.  11.  St.  Thomas. 

A.  Charity.  a.  Wisdom. 

B.  Avarice.  b.  Folly. 

10.  St.  Bartholomew.  12.  St.  Jude. 

A.  Chastity.  a.  Humility. 

B.  Lust.  B.  Pride. 

Now,  left-hand  side  again — the  two  outermost  statues: 

13.  Isaiah. 

A.  "I  saw  the  Lord  sitting  upon  a  throne."    vi.  1. 

B.  "Lo,  this  hath  touched  thy  lips."    vi.  7. 

14.  Jeremiah. 

A.  The  Burial  of  the  Girdle,    xiii.  4,  5. 

B.  The  Breaking  of  the  Yoke,    xxviii.  10. 

Right-hand  side: 

15.  Ezekiel. 

A.  Wheel  within  wheel,    i.  l6. 

B.  "Son  of  man,  set  thy  face  toward  Jerusalem."    xxi.  2. 

16.  Daniel. 

A.  "  He  hath  shut  the  lions'  mouths."    vi.  22. 

B.  **  In   the    same   hour   came    forth    fingers   of  a  ma 

hand."    v.  5. 

40.  Now,  beginning  on  the  left-hand  side  (southern  sid 
of  the  entire  facade,  and  reading  it  straight  across,  r 
turning  into  the  porches  at  all  except  for  the  pair 
quatrefoils : 

17.  HOSEA. 

A.  "  So  I  bought  her  to  me  for  fifteen  pieces  of  silver."   iii . 

B.  "So  will  I  also  be  for  thee."    iii.  3. 

18.  Joel. 

A.  The  Sun  and  Moon  lightless.    ii.  10. 

B.  The  Fig-tree  and  Vine  leafless,    i.  7. 

19.  Amos. 

To  the  f  A.  "The  Lord  will  cry  from  Zion."    i.  2. 

front   \  B.  "The  habitations  of  the  shepherds  shall  mourn."    i.  2 

Inside   {  c.  The  Lord  with  the  mason's  line.    vii.  8. 
porch   \  D.  The  place  where  it  rained  not.    iv.  7. 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS  151 

20.  Obadiah. 

Inside   (a.  "1  hid  them  in  a  cave."    1  Kings  xviii.  13. 
porch   \  B.  "He  fell  on  his  face.*'    xviii.  7. 

To  the  j  c.  The  captain  of  fifty. 
front   \  D.  The  messenger. ^ 

21.  Jonah. 

A.  Escaped  from  the  sea. 

B.  Under  the  gourd. 

22.  MiCAH. 

To  the  (  A.  The  Tower  of  the  Flock,    iv.  8. 

front   \  B.  Each  shall  rest,  and  "  none  shall  make  them  afraid."    iv.  4. 

Inside   (  c.  ''Swords  into  ploughshares."    iv.  3. 
porch    \  D.  "Spears  into  pruning-hooks."    iv.  3. 

J3.  Nahum. 

Inside    (  a.  "  None  shall  look  back."    ii.  8. 
porch    {  B.  "The  burden  of  Nineveh."    i.  1. 

To  the  j  c.  Thy  princes  and  thy  great  ones.    iii.  17. 
front   \  D.  Untimely  figs.    iii.  12. 

24.  Habakkuk. 

A.  "  I  will  watch  to  see  what  He  will  say."    ii.  1. 

B.  The  ministry  to  Daniel. ^ 

>J5,  Zephaniah. 

To  the  (  A.  The  Lord  strikes  Ethiopia,    ii.  12. 
front    I  B.  The  beasts  in  Nineveh,    ii.  15. 

Inside   j  c.  The  Lord  visits  Jerusalem,    i.  12. 
porch    I  D.  The  Hedgehog  and  Bittern.*    ii.  14. 

26.  Haggai. 

Inside  j  a.  The  houses  of  the  princes,  ornees  de  lambris,'^    i.  4. 
porch    (  B.  "The  heaven  is  stayed  from  dew."    i.  10. 

To  the  j  c.  The  Lord's  temple  desolate,    i.  4. 
front    \  D.  "Thus  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts."    i.  7. 

*  See  the  Septuagint  version.* 


th 


[Ruskin  gives  no  Bible  references  here,  because  the  interpretation  of  the 
jets  is  doubtful :  see  below,  p.  158.] 
■"See  below,  p.  159.] 

"Ceiled  houses"  in  the  English  Version.] 

[The  English  version  gives  "  the  bittern  shall  lodge  in  the  altar  lintels " ; 
Septuagint  and  Vulgate  give  ''the  hedgehog."] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


153 


2,  B.  Anger,  a  woman  stabbing  a  man  with  a  sword.    Anger  is  essen- 

tially a  feminine  vice  ^ — a  man,  worth  calUng  so,  may  be  driven 
to  fury  or  insanity  by  indignation  (compare  the  Black  Prince 
at  Limoges  2),  but  not  by  anger.  Fiendish  enough,  often  so — 
"Incensed  with  indignation,  Satan  stood,  unterrified — but  in 
that  last  word  is  the  difference ;  there  is  as  much  fear  in 
Anger,  as  there  is  in  Hatred. 

3,  A.  Gentillesse,  bearing  shield  with  a  lamb. 

3,  B.  Churlishness,  again  a  woman,  kicking  over  her  cupbearer.  The 

final  forms  of  ultimate  French  churlishness  being  in  the 
feminine  gestures  of  the  Cancan.  See  the  favourite  prints  in 
shops  of  Paris. 

4,  A.  Love  ;  the  Divine,  not  human  love :  ''I  in  them,  and  Thou  in 

me."*  Her  shield  bears  a  tree  with  many  branches  grafted 
into  its  cut-off  stem :  "  In  those  days  shall  Messiah  be  cut  off, 
but  not  for  Himself."^ 

4,  B.  Discord,  a  wife  and  husband  quarrelling.    She  has  dropped  her 

distaff  (Amiens  wool  manufacture,  see  farther  on — 9,  a). 

5,  A.  Obedience,  bears   shield   with   camel.     Actually   the   most  dis- 

obedient and  ill-tempered  of  all  serviceable  beasts, — yet  pass- 
ing his  life  in  the  most  painful  service.  I  do  not  know  how 
far  his  character  was  understood  by  the  northern  sculptor; 
but  I  believe  he  is  taken  as  a  type  of  burden-bearing,  without 
joy  or  sympathy,  such  as  the  horse  has,  and  without  power  of 
offence,  such  as  the  ox  has.  His  bite  is  bad  enough,  (see 
Mr.  Palgrave's  account  of  him,^)  but  presumably  little  known 
of  at  Amiens,  even  by  Crusaders,  who  would  always  ride  their 
own  war-horses,  or  nothing. 

5,  B.  Rebellion,  a  man  snapping  his  fingers  at  his  Bishop.  (As  Henry 
the  Eighth  at  the  Pope, — and  the  modern  French  and  English 
cockney  at  all  priests  whatever.) 


when  another  mysteriously  appeared  and  harnessed  itself  to  the  yoke.  "  The  people, 
for  whom  the  sculptor  worked,  could  not  think  without  emotion  (says  M.  Male) 
of  the  brave  beasts  who  worked  like  good  Christians  at  the  house  of  God."  Wq 
perhaps  treat  our  dumb  creatures  better  to-day,"  says  Mr.  Henry  James,  ^'^than  was 
done  five  hundred  years  ago  ;  but  I  doubt  whether  a  modern  architect,  in  settling 
his  accounts,  would  have  *^  remembered,'  as  they  say,  the  oxen"  C^^Rheims  and 
Laon,  a  Little  Tour,"  in  Portraits  of  Places,  1884).] 

^  [So  represented  on  the  Ducal  Palace,  as  a  woman  tearing  her  dress  open  at 
jher  breast :  see  Vol.  X.  p.  403.1 

^  [See  vol.  ii.  ch.  xxi.  (p.  6t,  ed.  1804)  of  Johnes's  FroissartJ] 

^  Paradise  Lost,  ii.  707-] 

*  [John  xvii.  28.] 

^  [See  Daniel  ix.  26.] 

^  \W.  G.  Palgrave,  Narrative  of  a  Years  Journey  through  Central  and  Eastern 
Arabia,  1865,  vol.  i.  pp.  39,  40.] 


154 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


6  A.  Perseverance,  the  grandest  spiritual  form  of  the  virtue  commonly 
'  called  ''Fortitude."     Usually,  overcoming  or  tearing  a  lion; 

here  caressing  one,  and  holding  her  crown.^    "Hold  fast  that 
which  thou  hast,  that  no  man  take  thy  crown."  2 

6  B.  Atheism,  leaving  his  shoes  at  the  church  door.    The  infidel  fool  i 
*  is  always  represented  in  twelfth  and  thirteenth  century  MS. 

as  barefoot — the  Christian  having  "his  feet  shod  with  the 
preparation  of  the  Gospel  of  Peace."  Compare  "How  beau- 
tiful are  thy  feet  with  shoes,  oh  Prince's  Daughter  !"3 

7  a.  Faith,  holding  cup  with  cross  above   it,  her  accepted  symbol 

throughout  ancient  Europe.^  It  is  also  an  enduring  one,  for, 
all  differences  of  Church  put  aside,  the  words,  "Except  ye 
eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  Man  and  drink  His  blood,  ye 
have  no  life  in  you,"^  remain  in  their  mystery,  to  be  under- 
stood only  by  those  who  have  learned  the  sacredness  of  food, 
in  all  times  and  places,  and  the  laws  of  life  and  spirit,  depen- 
dent on  its  acceptance,  refusal,  and  distribution.^ 

7,  B.  Idolatry,  kneeling  to  a  monster.    The  contrary  of  Faith — not  want 

of  Faith.    Idolatry  is  faith  in  the  wrong  thing,  and  quite  dis- 
tinct from  Faith  in  No  thing  (6,  b),  the  "  Dixit  Insipiens." 
Very  wise  men  may  be  idolaters,  but  they  cannot  be  atheists. 

8,  a.  Hope,  with  Gonfalon  Standard  and  distant  crown ;  ^  as  opposed  to 

the  constant  crown  of  Fortitude  (6,  a). 

The  Gonfalon  (Gund,  war;  fahn,  standard,  according  to 
Poitevin's  dictionary^)  is  the  pointed  ensign  of  forward  battle; 
essentially  sacred ;  hence  the  constant  name  "  Gonfaloniere " 
of  the  battle  standard-bearers  of  the  Italian  republics. 

Hope  has  it,  because  she  fights  forward  always  to  her  aim, 
or  at  least  has  the  joy  of  seeing  it  draw  nearer.  Faith  and 
Fortitude  wait,  as  St.  John  in  prison,  but  unoffended.  Hope 
is,  however,  put  under  St.  James,  because  of  the  7th  and 
8th  verses  of  his  last  chapter,  ending  "  Stablish  your  hearts, 
for  the  coming  of  the  Lord  draweth  nigh."  It  is  he  who 
examines  Dante  on  the  nature  of  Hope.  Par.,  c.  xxv.,  and^ 
compare  Cary's  notes. 

*  [Not  clear  upon  the  Plate  (XV.).  The  figure  is  caressing  the  jaw  of  a  lion 
with  her  right  hand,  while  in  her  left  she  holds  a  shield  charged  with  a  crown.] 

^  [Revelation  iii.  2.] 

^  ^Ephesiaus  vi.  15  ;  Song  of  Solomon  vii.  1.] 

*  [Compare  the  description  of  "  Faith  "  on  the  Ducal  Palace,  Vol.  X.  p.  394.] 
^  [John  vi.  53.]  | 

•  [With  the  ideas  suggested  by  this  passage,  compare  Laws  of  Fesoky  vii.  §  12 
(Vol.  XV.  p.  422),  and  Fors  Clavigera,  Letters  12,  38,  74,  and  88  (Vol.  XXVH. 
p.  218,  Vol.  XXVIII.  pp.  85-6,  and  Vol.  XXIX.  pp.  37,  383).  See  also  the 
Introduction,  above,  p.  Ixi.] 

'  [Psalms  xiv.  1  :  often  quoted  by  Ruskin  (see  General  Index).] 
®  [Compare  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  ii.  (VoL  X.  p.  399).] 

•  [M.  P.  Poitevin,  Nouveau  Dictionnaire  Universel  de  la  Langue  Fraufaise,  1857, 
vol.  i.  p.  1038.] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


155 


8,  B.  Despair,  stabbing  himself.  Suicide  not  thought  heroic  or  senti- 
mental in  the  thirteenth  century;  and  no  Gothic  Morgue  built 
beside  Somme. 

9,  A.  Charity,  bearing  shield  with  woolly  ram,  and  giving  a  mantle  to 

a  naked  beggar.  The  old  wool  manufacture  of  Amiens  having 
this  notion  of  its  purpose — namely,  to  clothe  the  poor  first, 
the  rich  afterwards.^  No  nonsense  talked  in  those  days  about 
the  evil  consequences  of  indiscriminate  charity.^ 

9,  B.  Avarice,  with  coffer  and  money.    The  modern,  alike  English  and 

Amienois,  notion  of  the  Divine  consummation  of  the  wool 
manufacture. 

10,  A.  Chastity,  shield  with  the  Phcenix.* 

10,  B.  Lust,  a  too  violent  kiss. 

11,  A.  Wisdom  :  shield  with,  I  think,  an  eatable  root :  ^  meaning  temper- 

ance, as  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 

11,  B.  Folly,  the  ordinary  type  used  in  all  early  Psalters,  of  a  glutton, 

armed  with  a  club.*  Both  this  vice  and  virtue  are  the  earthly 
wisdom  and  folly,  completing  the  spiritual  wisdom  and  folly 
opposite  under  St.  Matthew.  Temperance,  the  complement  of 
Obedience,  and  Covetousness,  with  violence,  that  of  Atheism, 

12,  A.  Humility,  shield  with  dove. 
12,  B.  Pride,  falling  from  his  horse. 

42.  All  these  quatrefoils  are  rather  symbolic  than  repre- 
^ntative;  and,  since  their  purpose  was  answered  enough  if 

*  For  the  sake  of  comparing  the  pollution,  and  reversal  of  its  once 
orious  religion,  in  the  modern  French  mind,  it  is  worth  the  reader*s 
hile  to  ask  at  M.  G  oyer's  (Place  St.  Denis)  for  the  Journal  de  St. 
icholas  for  1880,  and  look  at  the  "  Phenix,"  as  drawn  on  p.  6lO.  The 
ory  is  meant  to  be  moral,  and  the  Phoenix  there  represents  Avarice,  but 
le  entire  destruction  of  all  sacred  and  poetical  tradition  in  a  child's  mind 
y  such  a  picture  is  an  immorality  which  would  neutralize  a  year's  preach- 
ig.  To  make  it  worth  M.  Goyer's  while  to  show  you  the  number,  buy 
le  one  with  ^'  les  conclusions  de  Jeanie "  in  it,  p.  337 :  the  church  scene 
vith  dialogue)  in  the  text  is  lovely. 


[Compare  what  Ruskiu  says,  of  the  practical  Christianity  of  the  Dorth,  in  The 
leasures  of  England^  §  95  (below,  p.  486),  where  he  instances  this  figure.] 
2  [Compare  Queen  of  the  Air,  §  132  (Vol.  XIX.  p.  407).] 

^  [The  piece  has  been  restored,  but  "it  was  without  doubt  a  serpent  (as  at 
hartres)"  :  see  Durand,  vol.  i.  p.  340  and  ti.] 
*  [Compare  Giotto's  fresco  :  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  122.] 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


their  sign  was  understood,  they  have  been  entrusted  to  a 
much  inferior  workman  than  the  one  who  carved  the  now 
sequent  series  under  the  Prophets.  Most  of  these  subjects 
represent  an  historical  fact,  or  a  scene  spoken  of  by  the 
prophet  as  a  real  vision;  and  they  have  in  general  been 
executed  by  the  ablest  hands  at  the  architect's  command. 

With  the  interpretation  of  these,  I  have  given  again 
the  name  of  the  prophet  whose  life  or  prophecy  they 
illustrate. 


13.  Isaiah^  .  .  a.  ''I  saw  the  Lord  sitting  upon  a  throne"  (vi.  1). 

The  vision  of  the  throne  "high  and  lifted  up" 
between  seraphim. 

„       „     .  .  .  B.  "Lo,  this  hath  touched  thy  hps"  (vi.  7). 

The  Angel  stands  before  the  prophet,  and  holds, 
or  rather  held,  the  coal  with  tongs,  which  have  been 
finely  undercut,  but  are  now  broken  away,  only  a 
fragment  remaining  in  his  hand. 


14.  Jeremiah  .  a.  The  burial  of  the  girdle  (xiii.  4,  5). 

The  prophet  is  digging  by  the  shore  of  Euphrates, 
represented  by  vertically  winding  furrows  down  the 
middle  of  the  tablet. ^  Note,  the  translation  should 
be  "  hole  in  the  ground,"  not  "  rock." 

„         „        .  B.  The  breaking  of  the  yoke  (xxviii.  10). 

From  the  prophet  Jeremiah's  neck ;  it  is  here 
represented  as  a  doubled  and  redoubled  chain. 

15.  EzEKiEL    .  A.  Wheel  within  wheel  (i.  16). 

The  prophet  sitting;  before  him  two  wheels  of 
equal  size,  one  involved  in  the  ring  of  the  other. 

„        „         .  B.  ''Son  of  man,  set  thy  face  toward  Jerusalem"  (xxi.  2). 

The  prophet  before  the  gate  of  Jerusalem. 

16.  Daniel     .  a.  ''He  hath  shut  the  lions'  mouths"  (vi.  22). 

Daniel  holding  a  book,  the  lions  treated  as  heraldic 
supporters.  The  subject  is  given  with  more  anima- 
tion farther  on  in  the  series:  24,  b  [p.  159]. 


^  [For  Ruskin's  note  on  the  representation  of  Isaiah  generally,  see  above, 
p.  149.] 

*  [On  the  representation  of  water  in  early  art,  see  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  i. 
(Vol.  IX.  pp.  460  seq.),  and  Giotto,  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  84.] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


157 


Daniel  .  b.  "  In  the  same  hour  came  forth  fingers  of  a  man's  hand 
(v.  5). 

Belshazzar's  feast  represented  by  the  king  alone, 
seated  at  a  small  oblong  table.  Beside  him  the 
youth  Daniel,  looking  only  fifteen  or  sixteen,  grace- 
ful and  gentle,^  interprets.  At  the  side  of  the  quatre- 
foil,  out  of  a  small  wreath  of  cloud,  comes  a  small 
bent  hand,  writing,  as  if  with  a  pen  upside  down 
on  a  piece  of  Gothic  wall.* 

For  modern  bombast  as  opposed  to  old  simplicity, 
compare  the  Belshazzar's  feast  of  John  Martin !  ^ 

43.  The  next  subject  begins  the  series  of  the  minor 
ophets. 

,  HosEA  .  .  A.  "So  I  bought  her  to  me  for  fifteen  pieces  of  silver  and 
an  homer  of  barley  "  (iii.  2). 

The  prophet  pouring  the  grain  and  the  silver 
into  the  lap  of  the  woman,  "beloved  of  her  friend." 
The  carved  coins  are  each  wrought  with  the  cross, 
and,  I  believe,  legend  of  the  French  contemporary 
coin. 

„  .  .  .  B.  "So  will  I  also  be  for  thee"  (iii.  3). 

He  puts  a  ring  on  her  finger. 

.  Joel  ...  a.  The  sun  and  moon  lightless  (ii.  10). 

The  sun  and  moon  as  two  small  flat  pellets,  up 
in  the  external  moulding. 

„    .  .  .  B.  The  barked  fig-tree  and  waste  vine  (i.  7). 

Note  the  continual  insistence  on  the  blight  of 
vegetation  as  a  Divine  punishment  (19,  d). 

.  Amos  (To  the  front),  a.  "The  Lord  will  cry  from  Zion"  (i.  2). 

Christ  appears  with  crossletted  nimbus. 

„     .  .  .  B.  "The  habitations  of  the  shepherds  shall  mourn"  (i.  2). 

Amos  with  the  shepherd's  hooked  or  knotted 
staff,  and  wicker-worked  bottle,  before  his  tent. 
(Architecture  in  right-hand  foil  restored.) 

*  I  fear  this  hand  has  been  broken  since  I  described  it ;  ^  at  all  events, 
is  indistinguishably  shapeless  in  the  photograph  (No,  9  of  the  series). 


■I 


The  head  of  Daniel  is  now  (1906)  much  worn  away.] 

A  description  of  this  theatrical  picture  (1821)  may  be  read  in  Redgrave's 
mtury  of  Painters,  p.  361.    For  other  references  to  Martin,  see  General  Index.] 
*  [It  is  partly  broken,  but  two  of  the  fingers  are  still  plain  (1906).] 


158  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


19.  Amos  {Inside  Porch),  c.  The  Lord  with  the  mason's  line  (vii.  8). 

Christ,  again  here,  and  henceforward  always,  with 
crosslet  nimbus,  has  a  large  trowel  in  His  hand 
which  He  lays  on  the  top  of  a  half-built  wall.  Tliere 
seems  a  line  twisted  round  the  handle. 

„     „    .  .  .  D.  The  place  where  it  rained  not  (iv.  7). 

Amos  is  gathering  the  leaves  of  the  fruitless 
vine,^  to  feed  the  sheep,  who  find  no  grass.  One 
of  the  finest  of  the  reliefs. 

20.  Obadiah  {Inside  Porch),  a.  ''I  hid  them  in  a  cave"  (1  Kings  xviii.  13). 

Three  prophets  at  the  mouth  of  a  well,  to  whom 
Obadiah  brings  loaves. 

„  .  .  .  B.  "  He  fell  on  his  face  "  (xviii.  7). 

He  kneels  before  Elijah,  who  wears  his  rough 
mantle.2 

,j         „       {To  the  front),  c.  The  captain  of  fifty. ^ 

Elijah  (?)  speaking  to  an  armed  man  under  a  tree. 

„         „   .  .  .  D.  The  messenger. 

A  messenger  on  his  knees  before  a  king.  I 
cannot  interpret  these  two  scenes  (20  c  and  20  d). 
The  uppermost  may  mean  the  dialogue  of  Elijah 
with  the  captains,  (2  Kings  i.  9,)  and  the  lower  one, 
the  return  of  the  messengers  (2  Kings  i.  5). 

21.  Jonah  ...  a.  Escaped  from  the  sea, 

„  .  .  .  B.  Under  the  gourd.  A  small  grasshopper-like  beast  gnaw- 
ing the  gourd  stem.  I  should  like  to  know  what 
insects  do  attack  the  Amiens  gourds.  This  may  be 
an  entomological  study,  for  aught  we  know. 

22.  MicAH  {To  the  front),  a.  The  Tower  of  the  Flock  (iv.  8). 

The  tower  is  wrapped  in  clouds,  God  appearing 
above  it. 

„       „      .  .  .  B.  Each   shall  rest,  and  "none  shall  make  them  afraid" 
(iv.  4). 

A  man  and  his  wife  "under  his  vine  and  fig 
tree." 


*  [Durand  (vol.  i.  p.  358)  objects  that  the  tree  is  not  the  vine,  but  "the  bramble 
of  our  woods  with  its  berries  commonly  called  mures"  (blackberries).  He,  there- 
fore, refers  to  Amos  vii.  14  :  "  1  was  an  herdman."] 

2  [See  2  Kings  i.  8.] 

f  [2  Kings  i.  9.  Durand  (vol.  i.  p.  855)  prefers  to  interpret  the  sculpture  as 
Elijah  promising  Obadiah  to  present  himself  before  Ahab  (1  Kings  xviii.  15),  and 
similarly  he  interprets  20  d  as  the  interview  between  Elijah  and  Ahab.] 


I 


I 


I 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


159 


22.  MiCAH  {Inside  Porch),  c,  "Swords  into  ploughshares"  (iv.  3). 

Nevertheless,  two  hundred  years  after  these  medal- 
lions were  cut,  the  sword  manufacture  had  become 
a  staple  in  Amiens !    Not  to  her  advantage. 

„      .  .  .  D.  "Spears  into  pruning-hooks "  (iv.  3). 

23.  Nahum  (Inside  Porch),  a.  "None  shall  look  back"  (ii.  8). 

„       .  .  B.  "The  burden  of  Nineveh"  (i.  l).* 

„      (To  the  front),  c.  Thy  princes  and  thy  great  ones  (iii.  17). 

23  A,  B,  and  c  are  all  incapable  of  sure  interpretation.^  The 
prophet  in  a  is  pointing  down  to  a  little  hill,  said 
by  the  Pere  Roze  to  be  covered  with  grasshoppers.^ 
I  can  only  copy  what  he  says  of  them. 

.  .  D.  Untimely  figs  (iii.  12). 

Four  people  beneath  a  fig-tree  catch  its  falling 
fruit  in  their  mouths. 

14.  Habakkuk.  a.     I  will  watch  to  see  what  He  will  say  unto  me"  (ii.  1). 

The  prophet  is  writing  on  his  tablet  to  Christ's 
dictation. 


„  „  B.  The  ministry  to  Daniel. 

The  traditional  visit  to  Daniel.  An  angel  carries 
Habakkuk  by  the  hair  of  his  head ;  the  prophet  has 
a  loaf  of  bread  in  each  hand.  They  break  through 
the  roof  of  the  cave.  Daniel  is  stroking  one  young 
lion  on  the  back ;  the  head  of  another  is  thrust 
carelessly  under  his  arm.  Another  is  gnawing  bones 
in  the  bottom  of  the  cave. 

*  The  statue  of  the  prophet,  above,  is  the  grandest  of  the  entire 
eries ;  and  note  especially  the  diadema  "  of  his  own  luxuriant  hair  plaited 
ke  a  maiden's,  indicating  the  Achillean  force  of  this  most  terrible  of  the 
rophets.  (Compare  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  65,  page  157.^)  For  the  rest, 
tiis  long  flowing  hair  was  always  one  of  the  insignia  of  the  Frankish  kings, 
jad  their  way  of  dressing  both  hair  and  beard  may  be  seen  more  nearly 
nd  definitely  in  the  angle-sculptures  of  the  long  font  in  the  north  transept, 
tie  most  interesting  piece  of  work  in  the  whole  cathedral,  in  an  antiquarian 
;nse,  and  of  much  artistic  value  also.^    (See  ante^  chap.  ii.  §  S6.^) 

^  [Durand's  interpretation  (vol.  i.  p.  359)  is  as  follows  : — a,  Nineveh  in  its 
)lendour,  the  prophet  curses  the  city,    b,  Nineveh  overthrown,    c,  the  people  of 
ineveh  in  flight.] 
^  [Visite  d  la  Cathedrale  d' Amiens ,  par  I'Abbe  Roze,  p.  18.] 
3  [Of  the  first  edition  :  see  now  §  15,  Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  601.] 

*  [See,  for  a  representation  of  the  font,  Fig.  240  (vol.  ii.  p.  476)  in  Durand, 
id  for  a  description  of  it,  ibid.,  p.  530).] 

5  [Above,  p.  74.] 


160  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

25.  Zephaniah  {To  the  front),  a.  The  Lord  strikes  Ethiopia  (ii.  12). 

Christ  striking  a  city  with  a  sword.  Note  that 
all  violent  actions  are  in  these  bas-reliefs  feebly  or 
ludicrously  expressed;  quiet  ones  always  right. 

B.  The  beasts  in  Nineveh  (ii.  15). 

Very  fine.  All  kinds  of  crawling  things  among 
the  tottering  walls,  and  peeping  out  of  their  rents 
and  crannies.  A  monkey  sitting  squat,  developing 
into  a  demon,  reverses  the  Darwinian  theory. 

{Inside  Porch),  c.  The  Lord  visits  Jerusalem  (i.  12). 

Christ  passing  through  the  streets  of  Jerusalem, 
with  a  lantern  in  each  hand. 

„  D.  The  Hedgehog  and  Bittern*  (ii.  14). 

With  a  singing  bird  in  a  cage  in  the  window. 

26.  Haggai  {Inside  Porch),  a.  The  houses  of  the  princes,  ornees  de  lamhrls 

(i.  4). 

A  perfectly  built  house  of  square  stones  gloomily 
strong,  the  grating  (of  a  prison  ?)  in  front  of  founda- 
tion. 

„        „       .  .  B.  "The  heaven  is  stayed  from  dew"  (i.  10). 

The  heavens  as  a  projecting  mass,  with  stars, 
sun,  and  moon  on  surface.  Underneath,  two  withered 
trees. 

„        „       {To  the  front),  c.  The  Lord's  temple  desolate  (i.  4). 

The  falling  of  the  temple,  ''not  one  stone  left 
on  another,"  grandly  loose.  Square  stones  again. 
Examine  the  text  (i.  6). 

„        „       .  .  D,  "Thus  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts"  (i.  7). 

Christ  pointing  up  to  His  ruined  temple. 

27.  Zechariah  .  A.  The  lifting  up  of  Iniquity  (v.  6  to  9). 

Wickedness  in  the  Ephah. 

„        .  B.  "The  angel  that  spake  to  me"  (iv.  l). 

The  prophet  almost  reclining,  a  glorious  winged 
angel  hovering  out  of  cloud. 

28.  Malachi.  .  A.  "Ye  have  wounded  the  Lord"  (ii.  17). 

The  priests  are  thrusting  Christ  through  with 
a  barbed  lance,  whose  point  comes  out  at  His 
back. 

*  See  ante,  p.  151,  note. 


1 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


161 


Malachi,  .  B.  "This  commandment  is  to  yoii"  (ii.  1). 

In  these  panels,  the  undermost  is  often  introduc- 
tory to  the  one  above,  an  illustration  of  it.  It  is 
perhaps  chapter  i.,  verse  6,  that  is  meant  to  be 
spoken  here  by  the  sitting  figure  of  Christ,  to  the 
indignant  priests. 

44.  With  this  bas-relief  terminates  the  series  of  sculp- 
ire  in  illustration  of  Apostolic  and  Prophetic  teaching, 
hich  constitutes  what  I  mean  by  the  "Bible"  of  Amiens, 
ut  the  two  lateral  porches  contain  supplementary  subjects 
^cessary  for  completion  of  the  pastoral  and  traditional  teach- 
g  addressed  to  her  people  in  that  day. 
The  Northern  Porch,  dedicated  to  her  first  missionary 
Firmin,  has  on  its  central  pier  his  statue;  above,  on 
e  flat  field  of  the  back  of  the  arch,  the  story  of  the  find- 
g  of  his  body ;  on  the  sides  of  the  porch,  companion  saints 
id  angels  in  the  following  order: — 


CENTRAL  STATUE 
St.  Firmin 


Southern  {left)  side 

41.  St.  Firmin  the  Confessor. 

42.  St.  Domice. 

43.  St.  Honore. 

44.  St.  Salve. 

45.  St.  Quentin. 

46.  St.  Gentian. 


Northern  (right)  side 

47.  St.  Geoffroy. 

48.  An  angel. 

49.  St.  Fuscien,  martyr. 

50.  St.  Victoric,  martyr, 

51.  An  angel, 

52.  St.  Ulpha. 


45.  Of  these  saints,  excepting  St.  Firmin  and  St. 
[onore,  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken,^  St.  Geoffroy  is 
lore  real  for  us  than  the  rest ;  he  was  born  in  the  year 
f  the  battle  of  Hastings,  at  Molincourt  in  the  Soissonais, 
id  was  Bishop  of  Amiens  from  1104  to  1150.  A  man 
P  entirely  simple,  pure,  and  right  life  :  one  of  the  severest 
:  ascetics,  but  without  gloom — always  gentle  and  merciful, 
lany  miracles  are  recorded  of  him,  but  all  indicating  a 


*  See  ante,  Chap,  i.,  §§  7,  8  [p.  30],  for  the  history  of  St.  Firmin,  and 
r  St.  Honore,  §  8  of  this  chapter  [p.  129],  with  the  reference  there  given. 

XXXIII.  L 


162 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


tenour  of  life  which  was  chiefly  miraculous  by  its  justice! 
and  peace.    Consecrated  at  Rheims,  and  attended  by  a  train  - 
of  other  bishops  and  nobles  to  his  diocese,  he  dismounts  i 
from  his  horse  at  St.  Acheul,  the  place  of  St.  Firmin's 
first  tomb,  and  walks  barefoot  to  his  cathedral,  along  the  1 
causeway  now  so  defaced:  at  another  time  he  walks  bare-^ 
foot  from  Amiens  to  Picquigny  to  ask  from  the  Vidame 
of  Amiens  the  freedom  of  the  Chatelain  Adam.    He  main-ii 
tained  the  privileges  of  the  citizens,  with  the  help  of  Louis  ! 
le  Gros,  against  the  Count  of  Amiens,  defeated  him,  andi 
razed  his  castle ;  nevertheless,  the  people  not  enough  obey-l 
ing  him  in  the  order  of  their  life,  he   blames  his  own 
weakness,  rather  than  theirs,  and  retires  to  the  Grande 
Chartreuse,  holding  himself  unfit  to  be  their  bishop.  The 
Carthusian   superior  questioning  him   on  his  reasons  for 
retirement,  and  asking  if  he  had  ever  sold  the  offices  of 
the  Church,  the  Bishop  answered,  '*  My  father,  my  hands 
are  pure  of  simony,  but  I  have  a  thousand  times  allowed 
myself  to  be  seduced  by  praise." 

46.  St.  Firmin  the  Confessor  was  the  son  of  the  Roman 
senator  who  received  St.  Firmin  himself.  He  preserved 
the  tomb  of  the  martyr  in  his  father's  garden,  and  at  last 
built  a  church  over  it,  dedicated  to  Our  Lady  of  Martyrs! 
which  was  the  first  episcopal  seat  of  Amiens,  at  St.  Acheul| 
spoken  of  above.^  St.  Ulpha  was  an  Amienoise  girl,  whc 
lived  in  a  chalk  cave  above  the  marshes  of  the  Somme;— 
if  ever  Mr.  Murray  provides  you  with  a  comic  guide  tc; 
Amiens,  no  doubt  the  enlightened  composer  of  it  will  couni 
much  on  your  enjoyment  of  the  story  of  her  being  greatl) 
disturbed  at  her  devotions  by  the  frogs,  and  praying  then 
silent.  You  are  now,  of  course,  wholly  superior  to  sucl 
follies,  and  are  sure  that  God  cannot,  or  will  not,  so  mu4| 
as  shut  a  frog  s  mouth  for  you.  Remember,  therefore,  tha 
as  He  also  now  leaves  open  the  mouth  of  the  liar,  bias 
phemer,  and  betrayer,  you  must  shut  your  own  ears  againsj 
their  voices  as  you  can. 

^  [See  atove,  p.  81.] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS  163 

i 

Of  her  name,  St.  Wolf — or  Guelph— see  again  Miss 
onge's   Christian  names. ^    Our  tower   of  Wolf's  stone, 
llverstone,  and  Kirk  of  Ulpha,  are,  I  believe,  unconscious 

<  Picard  relatives. 

47.  The  other  saints  in  this  porch  are  all  in  like  manner 
]  ovincial,  and,  as  it  were,  personal  friends  of  the  Amienois ;  ^ 
rd  under  them,  the  quatrefoils  represent  the  pleasant  order 
(  the  guarded  and  hallowed  year — the  zodiacal  signs  above, 
iid  labours  of  the  months  below  ;^  little  differing  from 
1e  constant  representations  of  them — except  in  the  May: 

<  e  next  page.  The  Libra  also  is  a  little  unusual  in  the 
jinale  figure  holding  the  scales;  the  lion  especially  good- 
Itnpered — and  the  ''reaping"  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
j  ;ures  in  the  whole  series  of  sculptures ;  several  of  the 
(hers  peculiarly  refined  and  far-wrought.  In  JMr.  Kalten- 
I  cher's  photographs,  as  I  have  arranged  them,  the  bas- 
]liefs  may  be  studied  nearly  as  well  as  in  the  porch  itself. 
'  leir  order  is  as  follows,  beginning  with  December,  in  the 
]ft-hand  inner  corner  of  the  porch: — 

I  41.  December. — Killing  and  scalding  swine.     Above,   Capricorn  with 
quickly  diminishing  tail;  I  cannot  make  out  the  accessories. 

42.  January. — Twin-headed/  obsequiously  served.    Aquarius  feebler  than 

most  of  the  series. 

43.  February. — Very  fine;  warming  his  feet  and  putting  coals  on  fire. 

Fish  above,  elaborate  but  uninteresting. 

44.  March. — At  work  in  vine-furrows.^    Aries  careful,  but  rather  stupid. 


^  [History  of  Christian  Names j  pp.  335-336.] 

2  At  Rheims  a  portal  is  similarly  devoted  to  the  saints  of  the  province  ;  at 
]  urges,  of  the  five  portals,  two  are  devoted  to  local  saints."  (See  also  what 
]  skin  says  of  the  glass  at  Chartres,  Vol.  XVI.  p.  328.)  "Each  of  our  cathedrals 
]isents  the  religious  history  of  a  province"  (Note  in  the  French  translation  of 
'.  e  Bible  of  Amiens).'] 

[An  interesting  account  of  the  representations  of  the  months  on  various 
hnch  cathedrals  will  be  found  in  Male's  UArt  Religieux,  pp.  85  seq.  In  the 
J  skin  Museum  at  Sheffield  there  are  drawiners  of  the  series  on  Senlis  Cathedral 
(ol.  XXX.  p.  217).] 

*  [The  pagan  Janus  is  "thus  perpetuated  at  Amiens,  at  Notre-Dame  of  Paris, 
J  Chartres,  and  in  many  psalters.  One  of  his  faces  looks  at  the  departing,  the 
<ier  at  the  coming  year"  (see  Male,  p.  95).] 

^  ["There  are  no  longer  vineyards  at  Amiens,  but  they  existed  there  in  the 
^  ddle  Ages "  (Note  in  the  French  translation).] 


164  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

45.  April. — Feeding  his  hawk — very  pretty.    Taurus  above  with  charm- 

ing leaves  to  eat. 

46.  May. — Very  singularly,^  a  middle-aged  man  sitting  under  the  trees  I 

to  hear  the  birds  sing ;  and  Gemini  above,  a  bridegroom 
and  bride.  This  quatrefoil  joins  the  interior  angle  ones  of 
Zephaniah. 

52.  June, — Opposite,  joining  the  interior  angle  ones  of  Haggai.  Mowing. 

Note   the   lovely  flowers    sculptured  all   through   the  grass. 
Cancer  above,  with  his  shell  superbly  modelled. 

51.  July. — Reaping.  Extremely  beautiful.  The  smiling  lion  completes 
the  evidence  that  all  the  seasons  and  signs  are  regarded  as 
alike  blessing  and  providentially  kind. 

50.  August. — Threshing.  Virgo  above,  holding  a  flower,  her  drapery 
very  modern  and  confused  for  thirteenth-century  work. 

49.  September. — I  am  not  sure  of  his  action,  whether  pruning,  or  in 
some  way  gathering  fruit  from  the  full-leaved  tree.  Libra 
above ;  charming. 

48.  October. — Treading  grapes.  Scorpio,  a  very  traditional  and  gentle 
form — forked  in  the  tail  indeed,  but  stingless. 

47.  November.  —  Sowing,  with   Sagittarius,  half  concealed  when  this 

photograph  was  taken  by  the  beautiful  arrangements  always 
now  going  on  for  some  job  or  other  in  French  cathedrals:— 
they  never  can  let  them  alone  for  ten  minutes.^ 

48.  And  now,  last  of  all,  if  you  care  to  see  it,  we 
will  go  into  the  Madonna's  porch — only,  if  you  come  at 
all,  good  Protestant  feminine  reader — come  civilly  ;  and  be 
pleased  to  recollect,  if  you  have,  in  known  history,  material 
for  recollection,  this  (or  if  you  cannot  recollect — be  you 
very  solemnly  assured  of  this) :  that  neither  Madonna- wor^| 
ship,  nor  Lady-worship  of  any  sort,  whether  of  dead  ladies 
or  living  ones,  ever  did  any  human  creature  any  harm, 
— but  that  Money  worship.  Wig  worship,  Cocked- Hat-and 
Feather  worship,  Plate  worship.  Pot  worship  and  Pipe  wor-j 
ship,  have  done,  and  are  doing,  a  great  deal, — and  that  anj 

^  [So  Durand  (vol.  i.  p.  413):  '^deux  jeunes  gens,  garden  et  fille,  se  regardan 
amoureusement/'  the  sculptor  thus  departing  from  the  classical  idea  of  twins  ii 
a  strict  sense.] 

*  [For  other  references  to  the  restoration  of  French  cathedrals,  see  Vol.  XI5 
p.  462,  and  Vol.  XXVII.  p.  94  (author's  note  ad  fin.).] 


I 


I 

1 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


165 


these,  and  all,  are  quite  million-fold  more  offensive  to 
e  God  of  Heaven  and  Earth  and  the  Stars,  than  all  the 
surdest  and  lovingest  mistakes  made  by  any  generations 

His  simple  children,  about  what  the  Virgin-mother  could, 

would,  or  might  do,  or  feel  for  them. 

49.  And  next,  please  observe  this  broad  historical  fact 
out  the  three  sorts  of  Madonnas. 

There  is  first  the  Madonna  Dolorosa ;  the  Byzantine  type, 
d  Cimabue's.    It  is  the  noblest  of  all;  and  the  earliest, 
distinct  popular  influence.'^ 

Secondly.  The  Madone  Reine,  who  is  essentially  the 
ank  and  Norman  one ;  crowned,  calm,  and  full  of  power 
d  gentleness.    She  is  the  one  represented  in  this  porch. 

Thirdly.  The  Madone  Nourrice,  who  is  the  Raphael- 
jue^  and  generally  late  and  decadence  one.  She  is  seen 
re  in  a  good  French  type  in  the  south  transept  porch, 

before  noticed. 

An  admirable  comparison  will  be  found  instituted  by 
VioUet-le-Duc  (the  article  "Vierge,"  in  his  dictionary, 
altogether  deserving  of  the  most  attentive  study)  between 
s  statue  of  the  Queen-Madonna  of  the  southern  porch 
d  the  Nurse-Madonna  of  the  transept,    I  may  perhaps 
able  to  get  a  photograph  made  of  his  two  drawings, 
e  by  side  :  ^  but,  if  I  can,  the  reader  will  please  observe 
it  he  has  a  little  flattered  the  Queen,  and  a  little  vul- 
rized  the  Nurse,  which  is  not  fair.    The  statue  in  this 
jrch  is  in  thirteenth-century  style,  extremely  good:  but 
re  is  no  reason  for  making  any  fuss  about  it — the  earlier 
l^zantine  types  being  far  grander. 

*  vSee  the  description  of  the  Madonna  of  Murano,  in  second  volume 

Stones  of  Venice.'^ 


^  [On  the  Raphaelesque  type  of  Madonna,  see  Modern  Painters,  vol.  iii.  (Vol.  V. 

rs).] 

■_^[rhe  drawings  are  here  reproduced  from  Figs.  2  and  3,  vol.  ix.  pp.  369, 

'  [Vol.  X.  pp.  65-68.  For  Cimabue's  Madonna,  see  the  Frontispiece  to  this 
lime.] 


166  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

50.  The  Madonna's  story,  in  its  main  incidents,  is  tok 
in  the  series  of  statues  round  the  porch,  and  in  the  quatre 
foils  below — several  of  which  refer,  however,  to  a  legem 


The  Nurse-Madonna  The  Queen-Madonna 


about  the  Magi  to  which  I  have  not  had  access,  and  I  a:! 
not  sure  of  their  interpretation.^ 

The  large  statues  are  on  the  left  hand,  reading  outwan 
as  usual : — 

29.  The  Angel  Gabriel. 

30.  Virgin  Annunciate. 

31.  Virgin  Visitant. 

32.  St.  Elizabeth. 

33.  Virgin  in  Presentation. 

34.  St.  Simeon. 

1  [See  below,  p.  169  n.] 


I 


1 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS  167 


1  the  right  hand,  reading  outward, 

35,  36,  37.  The  three  Kings. 

38.  Herod. 

39.  Solomon. 

40.  The  Queen  of  Sheba. 

51.  I  am  not  sure  of  rightly  interpreting  the  introduc- 
tm  of  these  two  last  statues:^  but  I  believe  the  idea  of 
k3  designer  was  that  virtually  the  Queen  Mary  visited 
]erod  when  she  sent,  or  had  sent  for  her,  the  Magi  to 
tl  him  of  her  presence  at  Bethlehem:  and  the  contrast 
I  tween  Solomon's  reception  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  and 
llerod's  driving  out  the  Madonna  into  Egypt,  is  dwelt  on 
llroughout  this  side  of  the  porch,  with  their  several  conse- 
(  ences  to  the  two  Kings  and  to  the  world. 

The  quatrefoils  underneath  the  great  statues  run  as 
i  lows : 

r  Under  Gabriel— 

A.  Daniel  seeing  the  stone  cut  out  without  hands. 

B.  Moses  and  the  burning  bush.2 

;    Under  Virgin  Annunciate — 

A.  Gideon  and  the  dew  on  the  fleece. 

B.  Moses  with  written  law,  retiring;  Aaron,  dominant,  points  to 

his  budding  rod.^ 

1  [''The  idea  was  to  signify,  in  conformity  with  ecclesiastical  doctrine,  that 
i  lomon  prefigured  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  Queen  of  Sheba  the  Church  which  hastens 
•  .m  the  extremities  of  the  world  to  hear  the  Word  of  God.  The  visit  of  the  Queen 
.  Sheba  was  also  held  in  the  Middle  Ages  to  prefigure  the  Adoration  of  the  Magi. 
%e  Queen  coming  from  the  East  symbolises  the  Magi;  Solomon  upon  his  throne, 
e  Eternal  Wisdom  seated  on  the  knees  of  Mary  (Ludolphe  le  Chartreux,  Vita 
vrisU,  xi.).  This  is  why,  on  the  facade  of  Strasbourg,  one  sees  Solomon  on  his 
rone  guarded  by  twelve  lions,  and,  above,  the  Virgin  holding  the  Child  on  her 
iCes"  (Male,  pp.  189-190).] 
I  2  [Daniel  ii.  34  ;  Exodus  iii.  3,  4.] 

3  [Judges  vi.  37,  38;  Numbers  xvii.  8.  These  four  subjects,  so  remote  appa- 
ntly  from  the  history  of  the  Virgin,  are  also  found  on  the  western  porch  of  Laon 
d  on  a  window  at  Saint-Quentin,  both  of  which  are  devoted,  like  this  porch  of 
niens,  to  the  Virgin.  The  point  of  connexion  is  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of 
onorius  d'Autun  {Speculum  Ecclesice),  who  traces  in  various  episodes  of  the  Old 
istament  types  of  the  Virgin.  "  Le  buisson  que  la  flamme  ne  peut  consumer,  c  est 
Vierge  portant  en  elle  le  Saint  Esprit,  sans  bruler  de  feu  de  la  concupiscence, 
i  toison  ou  descend  la  rosee  est  la  Vierge  qui  devient  fe'conde ;  1' aire  qui  reste 
che  est  sa  virginite  qui  ne  subit  aucune  atteinte.  La  pierre  arrachee  de  la 
ontagne  sans  le  secours  des  bras,  c'est  Jesus-Christ  ne  d'une  Vierge  que  nul 
J  toucha"  (Male,  pp.  180,  181).] 


168  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

31.  Under  Virgin  Visitant — 

A.  The  message  to  Zacharias :  "  Fear  not,  for  thy  prayer  is  heard." 

B.  The  dream  of  Joseph  :  "  Fear  not  to  take  unto  thee  Mary  thv 

wife."  (?)i  ^ 

32.  Under  St.  Elizabeth— 

A.  The  silence  of  Zacharias :  "  They  perceived  that  he  had  seen 

a  vision  in  the  temple." 

B.  "There  is  none  of  thy  kindred  that  is  called  by  this  name." 

"  He  wrote  saying,  His  name  is  John."  ^ 

33.  Under  Virgin  in  Presentation — 

A.  Flight  into  Egypt. 

B.  Christ  with  the  Doctors. 

34.  Under  St.  Simeon — 

A.  Fall  of  the  idols  in  Egypt.^ 

B.  The  return  to  Nazareth. 

These  two  last  quatrefoils  join  the  beautiful  c  and  d  of  Amos. 
Then  on  the  opposite  side,  under  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  and  joining 
the  A  and  b  of  Obadiah — 

40.  A.  Solomon  entertains  the  Queen  of  Sheba.    The  Grace  cup. 

B.  Solomon  teaches  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  "God  is  above." 

39.  Under  Solomon — 

A.  Solomon  on  his  throne  of  judgment. 

B.  Solomon  praying  before  his  temple-gate. 

38.  Under  Herod— 

A.  Massacre  of  Innocents. 

B.  Herod  orders  the  ship  of  the  Kings  to  be  burned. 

37.  Under  the  third  King— 

A.  Herod  inquires  of  the  Kings. 

B.  Burning  of  the  ship. 

36.  Under  the  second  King — 

A.  Adoration  in  Bethlehem  ? — not  certain. 

B.  The  voyage  of  the  Kings. 

35.  Under  the  first  King — 

A.  The  Star  in  the  East. 

B.  "Being  warned  in  a  dream  that  they  should  not  return  to 

Herod."  4 

1  [Luke  i.  13;  Matthew  i.  20.   The  query  is  Ruskin's.   Durand  (vol.  i.  p.  392)  says: 
Evidently  the  nativity  of  Saint  John  the  Baptist,  but  expressed  with  tact  and  reserve. 
Here  the  mother  is  alone  ;  the  child  only  appears  in  the  following  bas-relief"  (32  b).] 
"  Xuke  i.  61,  63.] 

In  accordance  with  the  legend  founded  on  Isaiah  xix.  1.] 
'Matthew  ii.  12.] 


1  I 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


169 


I  have  no  doubt  of  finding  out  in  time  the  real  sequence 
f  these  subjects :  ^  but  it  is  of  little  import, — this  group  of 
uatrefoils  being  of  less  interest  than  the  rest,  and  that  of 
he.  Massacre  of  the  Innocents  curiously  illustrative  of  the 
icapability  of  the  sculptor  to  give  strong  action  or  passion. 
But  into  questions  respecting  the  art  of  these  bas-reliefs 
do  not  here  attempt  to  enter.  They  were  never  intended 
a  serve  as  more  than  signs,  or  guides  to  thought.  And 
■  the  reader  follows  this  guidance  quietly,  he  may  create 
Dr  himself  better  pictures  in  his  heart ;  and  at  all  events 
lay  recognize  these  following  general  truths,  as  their  united 
lessage. 

52.  First,  that  throughout  the  Sermon  on  this  Amiens 
lount,  Christ  never  appears,  or  is  for  a  moment  thought 
f,  as  the  Crucified,  nor  as  the  Dead :  but  as  the  Incarnate 
Vord — as  the  present  Friend — as  the  Prince  of  Peace  on 
larth,^ — and  as  the  Everlasting  King  in  Heaven.  What 
lis  life  is,  what  His  commands  are,  and  what  His  judg- 
lent  will  be,  are  the  things  here  taught:  not  what  He 
ace  did,  nor  what  He  once  suffered,  but  what  He  is  now 
oing — and  what  He  requires  us  to  do.  That  is  the  pure, 
)yful,  beautiful  lesson  of  Christianity;  and  the  fall  from 
lat  faith,  and  all  the  corruptions  of  its  abortive  practice, 
lay  be  summed  briefly  as  the  habitual  contemplation  of 
hrist's  death  instead  of  His  Life,  and  the  substitution 
f  His  past  suffering  for  our  present  duty.^ 

53.  Then,  secondly,  though  Christ  bears  not  His  cross, 
le  mourning  prophets, — the  persecuted  apostles — and  the 
lartyred  disciples  do  bear  theirs.  For  just  as  it  is  well 
)r  you  to  remember  what  your  undying  Creator  is  doing 
)r  you — it  is  well  for  you  to  remember  what  your  dying 
illow- creatures  have  done:  the  Creator  you  may  at  your 

^  [The  subjects  supplement  the  Bible  story  from  the  Legende  Doree,  according-  to 
nich  Herod,  having  heard  that  the  Three  Kings  had  sailed  in  a  ship  of  Tharsis, 
ive  order  for  all  the  ships  to  be  burnt.  The  subject  of  86  a,  however,  has  not 
en  explained.    Durand  calls  it  "  Micah  prophesying  of  Bethlehem"  (Micah  v.  2).] 

^  [Isaiah  ix.  5.] 

'  [Compare  Lectures  on  Art,  §  57  (Vol.  XX.  p.  64).] 


170  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


pleasure  deny  or  defy — the  Martyr  you  can  only  forget; 
deny,  you  cannot.  Every  stone  of  this  building  is  cemented 
with  his  blood,  and  there  is  no  furrow  of  its  pillars  that 
was  not  ploughed  by  his  pain. 

54?.  Keeping,  then,  these  things  in  your  heart,  look  back 
now  to  the  central  statue  of  Christ,  and  hear  His  message 
with  understanding.  He  holds  the  Book  of  the  Eternal 
Law  in  His  left  hand;  with  His  right  He  blesses, — but 
blesses  on  condition.  "  This  do,  and  thou  shalt  Kve ;  * 
nay,  in  stricter  and  more  piercing  sense.  This  be,  and  thou 
shalt  live:  to  show  Mercy  is  nothing — thy  soul  must  be 
full  of  mercy;  to  be  pure  in  act  is  nothing — thou  shalt  be 
pure  in  heart  also.^ 

And  with  this  further  word  of  the  unabolished  law— 
"  This  if  thou  do  not,  this  if  thou  art  not,  thou  shalt  die." 

55.  Die  (whatever  Death  means) — totally  and  irrevocably,  j 
There  is  no  word  in  thirteenth-century  Theology  of  the 
pardon  (in  our  modern  sense)  of  sins;  and  there  is  none 
of  the  Purgatory  of  them.    Above  that  image  of  Christ 
with  us,  our  Friend,  is  set  the  image  of  Christ  over  us,  1 
our   Judge.    For  this  present  life — here  is   His  helpful 
Presence.    After  this  life — there  is  His  coming  to  take 
account  of  our  deeds,  and  of  our  desires  in  them ;  and  the 
parting  asunder  of  the  Obedient  from  the  Disobedient,  of 
the  Loving  from  the  Unkind,  with  no  hope  given  to  the 
last  of  recall  or  reconciliation.    I  do  not  know  what  com- 
menting or  softening  doctrines  were  written  in  frightened 
minuscule  by  the  Fathers,  or  hinted  in  hesitating  whispers  ij 
by  the  prelates  of  the  early  Church.    But  I  know  that  | 
the  language  of  every  graven  stone  and  everjr  glowing 
window, — of  things  daily  seen  and  universally  understood 
by  the  people,  was  absolutely  and  alone,  this  teaching  of 
Moses  from  Sinai  in  the  beginning,  and  of  St.  John  from 
Patmos  in  the  end,  of  the  Revelation  of  God  to  Israel. 

This  it  was,  simply — sternly — and  continually,  for  thef 
great  three  hundred  years  of  Christianity  in  her  strength 

•  [Luke  X.  28  ;  Matthew  v.  8.] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


171 


(eleventh,  twelfth,  and  thirteenth  centuries),  and  over  the 
whole  breadth  and  depth  of  her  dominion,  from  lona  to 
!  Gyrene, — and  from  Calpe  to  Jerusalem.^  At  what  time 
the  doctrine  of  Purgatory  was  openly  accepted  by  Catholic 
Doctors,  I  neither  know  nor  care  to  know.  It  was  first 
formalized  by  Dante,  but  never  accepted  for  an  instant 
I  by  the  sacred  artist  teachers  of  his  time — or  by  those  of 
any  great  school  or  time  whatsoever.^ 

*  The  most  authentic  foundations  of  the  Purgatorial  scheme  in  art- 
teaching  are  in  the  renderings,  subsequent  to  the  thirteenth  century,  of 
I  the  verse  ''by  which  also  He  went  and  preached  unto  the  spirits  in 
prison/' 2  forming  gradually  into  the  idea  of  the  deliverance  of  the  waiting 
saints  from  the  power  of  the  grave. 

In  literature  and  tradition,  the  idea  is  originally,  I  believe,  Platonic ; 
certainly  not  Homeric.  Egyptian  possibly — but  I  have  read  nothing  yet 
of  the  recent  discoveries  in  Egypt.  Not,  however,  quite  liking  to  leave 
the  matter  in  the  complete  emptiness  of  my  own  resources,  I  have  ap- 
pealed to  my  general  investigator,  Mr.  Anderson  (James  R.),  who  writes 
as  follows: — 

"There  is  no  possible  question  about  the  doctrine  and  universal  incul- 
cation of  it,  ages  before  Dante.  Curiously  enough,  though,  the  statement 
of  it  in  the  Summa  Theologise  as  we  have  it  is  a  later  insertion ;  but  I 
find  by  references  that  St.  Thomas  teaches  it  elsewhere,  Albertus  Magnus 
develops  it  at  length.  If  you  refer  to  the  '  Golden  Legend '  under  All 
Souls'  Day,  you  will  see  how  the  idea  is  assumed  as  a  commonplace  in  a 
work  meant  for  popular  use  in  the  thirteenth  century.  St.  Gregory  (the 
Pope)  argues  for  it  (Dial.  iv.  38)  on  two  scriptural  quotations:  (1),  the  sin 
that  is  forgiven  neither  in  hoc  saeculo  nor  in  that  which  is  to  come,  and  (2), 

I  the  fire  which  shall  try  every  man's  work.  I  think  Platonic  philosophy 
and  the  Greek  mysteries  must  have  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  introduc- 
ing the  idea  originally;  but  with  them — as  to  Virgil — it  was  part  of  the 
Eastern  vision  of  a  circling  stream  of  life  from  which  only  a  few  drops 
were  at  intervals  tossed  to  a  definitely  permanent  Elysium  or  a  definitely 
permanent  Hell.    It  suits  that  scheme  better  than  it  does  the  Christian 

lone,  which  attaches  ultimately  in  all  cases  infinite  importance  to  the  results 

jof  life  in  hoc  sseculo. 

!  ''Do  you  know  any  representation  of  Heaven  or  Hell  unconnected 
with  the  Last  Judgment?  I  don't  remember  any,  and  as  Purgatory  is  by 
that  time  past,  this  would  account  for  the  absence  of  pictures  of  it. 

"  Besides,  Purgatory  precedes  the  Resurrection  —  there  is  continual 
question  among  divines  what  manner  of  purgatorial  fire  it  may  be  that 
affects   spirits   separate   from   the   body — perhaps   Heaven  and    Hell,  as 


^  [That  is,  from  north  to  south  (lona  to  Cyrene)  and  from  west  (Calpe,  i.e, 
Gibraltar)  to  east.] 
2  [1  Peter  iii.  19.] 


172 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


56.  Neither  do  I  know  nor  care  to  know — at  what 
time  the  notion  of  Justification  by  Faith,  in  the  modern 
sense,  first  got  itself  distinctively  fixed  in  the  minds  of  the 
heretical  sects  and  schools  of  the  North.  Practically  its 
strength  was  founded  by  its  first  authors  on  an  asceticism 
which  differed  from  monastic  rule  in  being  only  able  to 
destroy,  never  to  build ;  and  in  endeavouring  to  force  what 
severity  it  thought  proper  for  itself  on  everybody  else  also; 
and  so  striving  to  make  one  artless,  letterless,  and  merci- 
less monastery  of  all  the  world.  Its  virulent  effort  broke 
down  amidst  furies  of  reactionary  dissoluteness  and  disbehef, 
and  remains  now  the  basest  of  popular  solders  and  plasters 
for  every  condition  of  broken  law  and  bruised  conscience 
which  interest  can  provoke,  or  hypocrisy  disguise. 

57.  With  the  subsequent  quarrels  between  the  two 
great  sects  of  the  corrupted  church,  about  prayers  for  the 
Dead,  Indulgences  to  the  Living,  Papal  supremacies,  or 
Popular  liberties,  no  man,  woman,  or  child  need  trouble 
themselves  in  studying  the  history  of  Christianity:  they 
are  nothing  but  the  squabbles  of  men,  and  laughter  of 
fiends  among  its  ruins.  The  Life,  and  Gospel,  and  Power 
of  it,  are  all  written  in  the  mighty  works  of  its  true  be- 
lievers :  in  Normandy  and  Sicily,  on  river  islets  of  France 
and  in  the  river  glens  of  England,  on  the  rocks  of  Orvieto,  | 
and  by  the  sands  of  Arno.  But  of  all,  the  simplest,  com- 
pletest,  and  most  authoritative  in  its  lessons  to  the  active 
mind  of  North  Europe,  is  this  on  the  foundation  stones  of 
Amiens.  j 

opposed  to  Purgatory,  were  felt  to  be  picturable  because  not  only  spirits, 
but  the  risen  bodies  too  are  conceived  in  tliem. 

"  Bede's  account  of  the  Ayrshire  seer's  vision  gives  Purgatory  in  words 
very  like  Dante's  description  of  the  second  stormy  circle  in  Hell;  and  the 
angel  which  ultimately  saves  the  Scotchman  from  the  fiends  comes  through 
hell,  'quasi  fulgor  stellae  micantis  inter  tenebras' — 'qual  sul  presso  del 
mattino  Per  gli  grossi  vapor  Marte  rosseggia.'  ^  Bede's  name  was  great  in 
the  Middle  Ages.  Dante  meets  him  in  Heaven,  and  I  like  to  hope,  may 
have  been  helped  by  the  vision  of  my  fellow-countryman  more  than  six  J 
hundred  years  before." 


*  [PurgatoriOf  ii.  13,  14.] 


IV.  INTERPRETATIONS 


173 


!  58.  Believe  it  or  not,  reader,  as  you  will :  understand 
only  how  thoroughly  it  was  once  believed ;  and  that  all 
beautiful  things  were  made,  and  all  brave  deeds  done,  in 
the  strength  of  it — until  what  we  may  call  "this  present 
time,"  in  which  it  is  gravely  asked  whether  Religion  has 
any  effect  on  morals,^  by  persons  who  have  essentially 
no  idea  whatever  of  the  meaning  of  either  Religion  or 
Morality. 

Concerning  which  dispute,  this  much  perhaps  you  may 
have  the  patience  finally  to  read,  as  the  Fleche  of  Amiens 
fades  in  the  distance,  and  your  carriage  rushes  towards 
the  Isle  of  France,  which  now  exhibits  the  most  admired 
patterns  of  European  Art,  intelligence,  and  behaviour. 

59.  All  human  creatures,  in  all  ages  and  places  of  the 
world,  who  have  had  warm  affections,  common  sense  and 
self-command,  have  been,  and  are,  Naturally  Moral.  Human 
nature  in  its  fulness  is  necessarily  Moral, — without  Love, 
it  is  inhuman, — without  sense,^  inhuman, — without  discip- 
line, inhuman. 

In  the  exact  proportion  in  which  men  are  bred  capable 
of  these  things,  and  are  educated  to  love,  to  think,  and  to 
endure,  they  become  noble, — live  happily — die  calmly  :  are 
remembered  with  perpetual  honour  by  their  race,  and  for 
the  perpetual  good  of  it.  All  wise  men  know  and  have 
known  these  things,  since  the  form  of  man  was  separated 
from  the  dust.  The  knowledge  and  enforcement  of  them 
have  nothing  to  do  with  religion:  a  good  and  wise  man 
differs  from  a  bad  and  idiotic  one,  simply  as  a  good  dog 
from  a  cur,  and  as  any  manner  of  dog  from  a  wolf  or  a 
weasel.  And  if  you  are  to  believe  in,  or  preach  without 
i  half  believing  in,  a  spiritual  world  or  law — only  in  the  hope 
that  whatever  you  do,  or  anybody  else  does,  that  is  foolish 

I  don't  mean  aesthesis, — but  vovs,  if  you  must  talk  in  Greek  slang.  ^ 

^  [The  reference  is  to  a     Symposium "  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century  on  the  question  of  "  The  Influence  of  the  Decline  of  Religion  on  Morality."] 

"  [For  Ruskin's  use  and  distinction  of  these  terms,  see  Vol.   XX.   p.  207 
Vol.  XXII.  p.  130;  and  Vol.  XXV.  p.  123.] 


174 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


or  beastly,  may  be  in  them  and  by  them  mended  and 
patched  and  pardoned  and  worked  up  again  as  good  as 
new — the  less  you  believe  in — and  most  solemnly,  the  less 
you  talk  about — a  spiritual  world,  the  better. 

60.  But  if,  loving  well  the  creatures  that  are  like  your- 
self, you  feel  that  you  would  love  still  more  dearly, 
creatures  better  than  yourself — were  they  revealed  to  you; 
— if  striving  with  all  your  might  to  mend  what  is  evil, 
near  you  and  around,^  you  would  fain  look  for  a  day  when 
some  Judge  of  all  the  Earth  shall  wholly  do  right,  and 
the  little  hills  rejoice  on  every  side;^  if,  parting  with  the 
companions  that  have  given  you  all  the  best  joy  you  had 
on  Earth,  you  desire  ever  to  meet  their  eyes  again  and 
clasp  their  hands, — where  eyes  shall  no  more  be  dim,^  nor 
hands  fail; — if,  preparing  yourselves  to  lie  down  beneath 
the  grass  in  silence  and  loneliness,  seeing  no  more  beauty, 
and  feeling  no  more  gladness — you  would  care  for  the 
promise  to  you  of  a  time  when  you  should  see  God's  light 
again,  and  know  the  things  you  have  longed  to  know,  and 
walk  in  the  peace  of  everlasting  Love — then,  the  Hope  of 
these  things  to  you  is  religion,  the  Substance  of  them  in 
your  life  is  Faith.  And  in  the  power  of  them,  it  is 
promised  us,  that  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  shall  yet 
become  the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and  of  His  Christ.* 

^  [Compare  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  76  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  88),  and  Raskin's  note 
there.] 

2  [Genesis  xviii.  25  ;  Psalms  Ixv.  12.] 
^   Isaiah  xxxii.  3.] 
^  [Revelation  xi.  15.] 


APPENDICES 


I.  Chronological  List  of  the  Principal  Events  referred  to  in 

"  The  Bible  of  Amiens  " 

II.  References  Explanatory  of  the  Photographs  illustrating 

Chapter  IV. 

III.  General  Plan  of  "Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us" 


APPENDIX  I 


CHRONOLOGICAL  LIST  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  EVENTS 
REFERRED  TO  IN  THE  "BIBLE  OF  AMIENS'' 


I. 


D. 

0.  Rise  of  the  Franks  ..... 

1.  St.  Firmin  conies  to  Amiens 

2.  St.  Martin  and  the  Beggar  at  Amiens 
5.  St.  Jerome  born  ..... 

3.  First  Church  at  Amiens,  over  St.  Firmin's  grave 
i.  Franks  defeated  by  Julian  near  Strasburg 
5.  St.  Jerome's  Bible  ..... 

).  St.  Jerome  dies.       .  . 

.  St.  Genevieve  born.    Venice  founded 
).  Franks  under  Clodion  take  Amiens  . 
I.  Merovee  king  at  Amiens  .... 
[.  Battle  of  Chalons.    Attila  defeated  by  Aetius 
^  Merovee  dies.    Childeric  king  at  Amiens  (457- 

481)  

).  Clovis  born  ...... 

5.  Roman  Empire  in  Italy  ended  by  Odoacer 

L.  Clovis  crowned  at  Amiens 

,  St.  Benedict  born  ..... 

Battle  of  Soissons.    Clovis  defeats  Syagrius 

Syagrius  dies  at  the  court  of  Alaric 
Battle  of  Verona.    Theodoric  defeats  Odoacer 
Clovis  marries  Clotilde  .... 

Battle  of  Tolbiac.    Clovis  defeats  the  Alemanni  | 

Clovis  crowned  at  Rheims  by  St.  Remy  . 
3.  Clovis  baptized  by  St.  Remy  . 
3.  Battle  of  Poitiers.    Clovis  defeats  the  Visigoths  f 
under  Alaric.    Death  of  Alaric    .       .       .  ( 
XXXIII.  177 


Chap. 

Sect. 

in  this 

Volume. 

ii. 

17 

61 

i. 

6 

29 

i. 

23 

40 

iii. 

34 

106 

8 

30 

iv. 

14 

134 

ii. 

35 

74 

ii. 

47 

80 

iii. 

36 

108 

ii. 

2  n.  54 

iii. 

40 

111 

ii. 

2,  3 

54 

i. 

10,  34 

32,  48 

i. 

10 

32 

i. 

10 

32 

12 

33 

12 

33 

12 

33 

12,  34 

33,  48 

ii. 

2,  49 

54,  81 

ii. 

2,  3 

54 

ii. 

13,  34 

34,  48 

49 

82 

ii. 

49 

82 

ii. 

54 

85 

ii. 

50 

82 

13,  21 

34,  39 

ii. 

52 

83 

i. 

13 

34 

i. 

20 

39 

13 

34 

ii. 

53 

84 

APPENDIX  II 


REFERENCES  EXPLANATORY  OF  THE  PHOTOGRAPHS  \ 
ILLUSTRATING  CHAPTER  IV 

The  quatrefoils  on  the  foundation  of  the  west  front  of  Amiens  Cathedral! 
described  in  the  course  of  the  fourth  chapter,  had  never  been  engravecj 
or  photographed  in  any  form  accessible  to  the  public  until  last  year  [1880] 
when  I  commissioned  M.  Kaltenbacher  (6,  Passage  du  Commerce),  wh( 
had  photographed  them  for  M.  Viollet  le  Due,  to  obtain  negatives  of  th( 
entire  series,  with  the  central  pedestal  of  the  Christ. 

The  proofs  are  entirely  satisfactory  to  me,  and  extremely  honourable  ti 
M.  Kaltenbacher's  skill:  and  it  is  impossible  to  obtain  any  more  instruc: 
tive  and  interesting,  in  exposition  of  the  manner  of  central  thirteenthij 
century  sculpture.  i 

I  directed  their  setting  so  that  the  entire  succession  of  the  quatrefoil 
might  be  included  in  eighteen  plates ;  the  front  and  two  sides  of  thtj 
pedestal  raise  their  number  to  twenty-one  :  the  whole,  unmounted,  solci 
by  my  agent  Mr.  Ward  (the  negatives  being  my  own  property)  for  fouj 
guineas;  or  separately,  each  five  shillings.^  1 

Besides  these  of  my  own,  I  have  chosen  four  general  views  of  th 
cathedral  from  M.  Kaltenbacher's  formerly-taken  negatives,  which,  togethe 
with  the  first-named  series,  (twenty-five  altogether,)  will  form  a  completij 
body  of  illustrations  for  the  fourth  chapter  of  "The  Bible  of  Amiens 
costing  in  all  five  guineas,  forwarded  free  by  post  from  Mr.  Ward's  {% 
Church  Terrace,  Richmond,  Surrey).^  In  addition  to  these,  Mr.  Ward  wi 
supply  the  photograph  of  the  four  scenes  from  the  life  of  St.  Firmir 
mentioned  in  Chapter  i.  §  7 ;  price  five  shillings."^  i 

For  those  who  do  not  care  to  purchase  the  whole  series,  I  have  markef 
with  an  asterisk  the  plates  which  are  especially  desirable. 


The  two  following  lists  ^  will  enable  readers  who  possess  the  plates  ^ 
refer  without  difficulty  both  from  the  photographs  to  the  text,  and  fror 

*  This  is  the  first  of  another  series  of  photographs  illustrative  of  the  cathedra 
which  has  not  been  continued. — Ed.  (1897). 


1  [Copies  of  the  photographs  are  now  (1907)  to  be  had  of  George  Allen  aiij 
Sons.] 

'  [To  which  in  this  edition  references  have  been  added  to  the  Plates  on  whic 
the  several  photographs  are  reproduced.] 

178 


APPENDIX  II 


179 


he  text  to  the  photographs,  which  will  be  found  to  fall  into  the  following 
groups :— - 

'hotographs. 

1-3.  The  Central  Pedestal. 
David. 

4-7.  The  Central  Porch. 

Virtues  and  Vices. 
8-9.  The  Central  Porch. 

The  Major  Prophets,  with  Micah  and  Nahum. 

10-13.  The  Facade. 

The  Minor  Prophets. 

14-17.  The  Northern  Porch. 

The  Months  and  Zodiacal  Signs,  with  Zephaniah  and  Haggai. 

18-21.  The  Southern  Porch. 

Scriptural  History,  with  Obadiah  and  Amos. 

22-25.  Miscellaneous. 

PART  I 

List  of  Photographs  with  reference  to  the  Quatrefoils,  etc."^ 
1-3.  Central  Pedestal.    See  32-33. 


■^1.  Front  David.    Lion  and  Dragon.  Vine. 

*2.  North  Side    ....    Lily  and  Cockatrice. 
^3.  South  Side     ....    Rose  and  Adder. 


Plates. 


XIII. 


4-7.  Central  Porch. 


Virtues  and  Vices  (§§  39  &  41). 


4.  1  A.  Courage. 

1  B,  Cowardice. 

5.  4  A.  Love. 

4  B.  Discord. 

6.  9  A.  Charity. 
9  B.  Avarice. 

7.  12  A.  Humility. 
12  B.  Pride. 


2  A. 
2  B. 


Patience. 
Anger. 


o  A.  Obedience. 
5  B.  Rebellion. 

8  A.  Hope. 
8  B.  Despair. 

11  A.  Wisdom. 
11  B.  Folly. 


8  A.  Gentillesse. 
3  B.  Churlishness. 

6  A.  Perseverance. 

6  B.  Atheism. 

7  A.  Faith. 

7  B,  Idolatry. 

10  A.  Chastity. 
10  B.  Lust. 


XIV. 
XV. 
XVI. 
XVII. 


The  sections  referred  to  in  this  Appendix  are  those  of  Chapter  IV. — Ed.  (1897). 


180 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


Photographs. 

8-9.  Central  Porch. 

The  Major  Prophets  (§§  39,  42),  with  Micah  and  Nahum  (§§  40,  43). 


Isaiah. 

13  A. 
13  B. 

-Tl?T>  1? ATT  A  TT 

14  A. 
14  B. 

ATtP  ATT 

22  c. 
22  D. 

Plates. 
XVIII. 

9. 

Nahum. 

Daniel. 

EZEKIEL. 

23  a. 
23  B. 

16  A. 
16  B. 

15  A. 
15  B. 

The 

Facade. 

The  Minor  Prophets  (§§  40, 

43). 

*10. 

Amos. 

Joel. 

HOSEA, 

19  A. 
19  B. 

18  A. 
18  B. 

17  A. 
17  B. 

V  V 

XX. 

^11. 

Micah. 

Jonah. 

Obadiah, 

22  A. 
22  B. 

21  A. 
21  B. 

20  c. 
20  D. 

XXI. 

■^12. 

Zephaniah. 

Habakkuk. 

Nahum. 

25  A. 
25  B. 

24  A. 
24  B. 

23  c. 
23  D. 

XXII. 

13. 

Malachi. 

Zechariah. 

Haggai. 

28  A. 
28  B. 

27  A. 

27  B. 

26  c. 
26  D. 

XXHL 

The 

Northern 

Porch. 

The  Months  and  Zodiacal  Signs  (§  47),  with  Zephaniah  and 
Haggai  (§§  40,  43). 


41. 

14.  Capricorn. 
December. 


42. 

Aquarius. 
January. 


45. 

15.  Taurus. 

April. 

26  A. 

16.  Haggal 

26  B. 


60. 

17.  Virgo. 
August. 


49. 

Libra. 
September. 


43. 

Pisces. 
February. 


46. 

Gemini. 
May. 

52. 

Cancer. 
June. 


48. 

Scorpio. 
October. 


44. 

Arii:s. 
March. 

25  c. 

Zephaniah. 
25  D. 

61. 

Leo. 
July. 

47. 

Sagittarius. 
November. 


XXIV, 


XXV. 


XXVI. 


XXVII. 


APPENDIX  II 


181 


hotographs. 
18-21.  The  Southern  Porch. 


Scriptural  History  (§  51),  with  Obadiah  and  Amos 
(§§  40,  42,  43). 


*18.  29  A.  Daniel  and  the  stone. 
29  B.  Moses  and  the  Burning 
Bush. 

31  A.  The  message  to  Zacha- 
rias. 

31  B.  Dream  of  Joseph. 


30  A.  Gideon  and  the  fleece. 
30  B.  Moses  and  Aaron. 

32  A.  The  Silence  of  Zacha- 
rias, 

32  b.  ^^His  name  is  John." 


19.  33  A.  The  Flight  34  a.  The  Fall  of  the 
into  Egypt.  Idols. 

33  B.  Christ    and  34  b.  Return  to  Naza- 
the  Doctors.  reth. 


20.  20  A.  Obadiah. 
20  b.  Obadiah. 


40  A.  Solomon  and  the 
Queen  of  Sheba. 
The  Grace  Cup. 

40  B.  Solomon  teach- 
ing the  Queen 
of  Sheba.  "God 
is  above." 


19  c.  Amos. 
19  D.  Amos. 

39  A.  Solomon  en- 
throned. 

39  B.  Solomon  in 
prayer. 


21.  38  A.  Holy  Innocents. 

38  B.  Herod  orders  the  Kings' 
ship  to  be  burnt. 

36  A.  Adoration  in  Bethle- 
hem Q). 

36  B.  The  voyage  of  the 
Kings. 


37  A.  Herod  and  the  Kings. 
37  B.  The   burning   of  the 
ship. 

35  A.  The  Star  in  the  East. 

35  B.  The  Kings  warned  in 
a  dream. 


22-25.  Miscellaneous. 

■^22.  The  Western  Porches  

*23.  The  Porch  of  St.  Honobe  

24.  The  South  Transept  and  Fleche  

25.  General  View  of  the  Cathedral  from  the  other  Bank 

of  the  Somme    .       .       .       •       .       .       .       .  . 


Plates. 


XXVIII. 


XXIX. 


XXX. 


XXXI. 


X. 
...^ 

VIII. 

III. 


1  [This  photograph  has  been  given  already  in  Vol.  XVI.  Plate  XVI.  (p.  356), 
I'here  the  porch  is  more  fully  described.] 


182 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 


PART  II 

List  of  Quatrefoils  with  reference  to  the  Photographs 


c     Name  of  Statue 

o  . 

ci  O 

The  Apostles. 

1.  St.  Peter  . 

2.  St.  Andrew 

3.  St.  James  . 

4.  St.  John 

5.  St.  Matthew 

6.  St.  Simon  . 

7.  St.  Paul  . 

8.  St.  James  the  \ 

Bishop  ) 

9.  St.  Philip  . 


Subject  of  Quatrefoil. 


Virtues  and  Vices. 


(a.  Courage 
(  B.  Cowardice 

(a.  Patience  . 


Anger 

1: 

(a.  Lo 
|b.  Di 


A.  Gentillesse 
Churlishness 


Love 
Discord 


j  A.  Obedience 
/  B.  Rebellion 


I  A.  Perseverance 
(  B.  Atheism  . 


(a.  Faith 

(  B.  Idolatry 

(a.  Hope 

I  B.  Despair 

(a.  Charity 

(  B.  Avarice 


10.  St.  Bartholomew  I^-  Chastity 
(  B.  Lust 


11.  St.  Thomas  . 

12.  St.  Jude 


(a.  Wisdom 

(  B. 


Folly 

(a.  Humility 
•^B.  Pride 

The  Major  Prophets. 
13.  Isaiah  .  . 


Section 
where 

described  d  ^  Plate 
(chap.  iv. )  "o 


5  I    No.  of 


§§  39,  41] 
§§  89,  41 


§§  39,  41 
§§  39,  41 

§§  39,  41 , 

if 
>) 

§§  39,  41 

§§39,  41 J 
§41 


it 

a 

§§  39,  41 


14.  Jeremiah 

15.  Ezekiel 

16.  Daniel 


j  A.  The  Lord  enthroned 

*  )  B.  Lo  !  this  hath  touched  thy  lips 

( A.  The  burial  of  the  girdle 

•  ]  B.  ■ 

( A.  Wheel  within  wheel 
."Jb. 

(  A.  He  hath  shut  the  lions'  mouths 

.  (  B.  Fingers  of  a  man's  hand 


The  breaking  of  the  yoke 

Wheel  within  wheel 

Set  thy  face  towards  Jerusalem 


§  39 
§  42 

§39 
.M2 


§§  39,  42 


XIV. 


XV. 


V  6  XVI. 


7  XVII. 


I  8  XVIII. 


.  9  XIX. 


The  Minor  Prophets. 


Name  of  Statue. 


HOSEA 


Joel 


APPENDIX  II 


Subject  of  Quatrefoil. 


A.  So  I  bought  her  to  me  . 

B.  So  will  I  also  be  for  thee 

A.  The  sun  and  moon  lightless 

B.  The  fig-tree  and  vine  leafless 


Amos 


Obadiah 


Jonah 


MiCAH 


Nahum 


A.  The  Lord  will  cry  from  Zion 
:b.  The  habitations  of  the  shep- 


Fa9ade  ( 

\  herds 
Porch  \  ^'  '^^^  Lord  with  the  mason's  line 
\  D,  The  place  where  it  rained  not 

f  Porch  I      L^^^i^^^""^^^  ^^^^^^ 
J  (  B.  He  tell  on  his  face 

|Fa9ade  |  ^'         captain  of  fifty 


I 


D.  The  messenger 

A.  Escaped  from  the  sea 

B.  Under  the  gourd 


{T?o^a/iii  5  ^*  'The  tower  of  the  Flock 
J^a9aae|^^  Each  shall  rest 
Porch  \  ^'  ^^^^^^  ^^^^  ploughshares 
(  D.  Spears  into  pruning-hooks 

{pi  S  A.  None  shall  look  back 
\  B.  The  Burden  of  Nineveh 
Fa9ade  |  ^'  T-^^-  ^^'^J^^^3        g^®^*  ones 


Habakkuk  . 


.  Zephaniah-I 


fFa9ade  | 


Porch 


Untimely  figs 


A.  I  will  watch 

B.  The  ministry  to  Daniel  . 

A.  The  Lord  strikes  Ethiopia 

B.  The  beasts  in  Nineveh  . 
c.  The  Lord  visits  Jerusalem 
D.  The  Hedgehog  and  Bittern 


).  Haggai 


r  Porch  bouses  of  the  princes 

J  /  B.  The  Heaven  stayed  from  ( 


desolate 
the  Lord 


J.  Zechariah  . 
J.  Malachi 


■I 


A.  The  lifting  up  of  Iniquity 

B.  The  angel  that  spake  to  me 

A.  Ye  have  wounded  the  Lord 

B.  This  commandment  is  to  you 


!§  40,  43 


§  40 
§  43 

33 
33 
33 
33 


19 


}20 


§43 
§§  40,  43  ( 


§  40 
§43 


}9 


§§  40,  43 


§§  40,  43 


§40 

§43 


}15 
}16 


33 
33 

§§  40,  43 


188 


Section  ^  &, 

where  °  t    No.  of 

described  o'  ^  Plate, 

(chap,  iv, )  "o 


40,  43 
40,  43 


10  XX. 


XXIX. 
XXX. 

XXI. 

XVIIL 
XIX. 


V12  XXII. 


XXV. 
XXVI. 


Il3  XXIIL 


184  THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS 

Southern  Porch — to  the  Virgin. 


Name  of  Statue. 


29.  Gabriel 


30.  Virgin  An- 
nunciate 


Subject  of  Quatrefoil. 


A.  Daniel  and  the  stone  cut  with 

out  hands 

B.  Moses  and  the  burning  bush 


A.  Gideon  and  the  fleece 

B.  Moses  and  the  law. 

and  his  rod  . 


Aaron 


( A.  The  message  to  Zacharias 
31.  Virgin  Visitant  .  |  ^  ^j^^  dream  of  Joseph  . 


32.  St.  Elizabeth 

33.  Virgin  in  Presen- 

tation 

34.  St.  Simeon  . 

35.  The  First  King 


(a.  The 
^B.  ^^H 


silence  of  Zacharias  . 
is  name  is  John  " 


A.  Flight  into  Egypt  . 

B.  Christ  with  the  Doctors  . 

f  A.  Fall  of  Idols  in  Egypt  . 
(  B.  The  return  to  Nazareth  . 


A.  The  Star  in  the  East 

B.  "Warned  in  a  dream 


36.  The  Second  King  |  ^'  Adoration  in  Bethlehem  (?) 

I  B.  liie  voyage  of  the  Kings 


37.  The  Third  King 


38.  Herod  . 


39.  Solomon 


f  A.  Herod  inquires  of  the  Kings 
I  B.  The  burning  of  the  ship 


A.  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

B.  Herod  orders  the  ship  to  be 

burnt 


J A.  Solomon  enthroned  . 
B.  Solomon  in  prayer  . 


40.  Queen  of  Sheba  j^*  J,)?  Grace  cup 
^  (  b.     God  IS  above 


Northern  Porch — to  St.  Firmin  (p.  234,  §  44). 


41.  St.   Firmin  Con- 

fessor 

42.  St.  Domice  . 

43.  St.  Honor]^  . 

44.  St.  Sai.vb 


A.  Capricorn 

B.  December 


5  A.  Aquarius 

*  (  B.  January 

i  A.  Pisces 

'  (  B.  February 


A.  Aries 

B.  March 


Section  ^  a 

where  °  S 

described  6  ^  Plate, 
(chap.  iv. )  o 


No.  of 


§51 


§47 


18  XXVIII. 


J9  XXIX. 


>21  XXXI. 


►20  XXX. 


VU  XXIV. 


APPENDIX  II 


a     Name  of  Statue. 


Subject  of  Quatrefoi]. 


).  St.  Quentin 
5.  St.  Gentian 
.  St.  Geoffroy 
!.  An  Angel  . 


St.  Fuscien, 
Martyr 


St.  Victoric, 
Martyr 


An  Angel  . 
St.  Ulpha 


(a.  Taurus 


April 


f  A.  Gemini 
l  B.  May  . 

(  A.  Sagittarius 
[  B.  November 

(  A.  Scorpio 


!  -1 


October 


A.  Libra 

B.  September 

A.  Virgo 

B.  August 


5  A.  Leo 

•  i  B.  - 


A.  Uancer 

B.  June 


§47 


185 


Section  ^ 
where      ^  ^   No.  of 
described    ©'  o  Plate. 


15  XXV. 


>i7  xxvn. 


16  XXVI. 


APPENDIX  III 


GENERAL  PLAN  OF  "OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US^ij 

The  first  part  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us,  now  submitted  to  the  public, 
is  enough  to  show  the  proposed  character  and  tendencies  of  the  work,  tc 
which,  contrary  to  my  usual  custom,  I  now  invite  subscription,  because 
the  degree  in  which  I  can  increase  its  usefulness  by  engraved  illustratioi 
must  greatly  depend  on  the  known  number  of  its  supporters. 

1  do  not  recognize,  in  the  present  state  of  my  health,  ^'  any  reason  tc 
fear  more  loss  of  general  power,  whether  in  conception  or  industry,  thar 
is  the  proper  and  appointed  check  of  an  old  man's  enthusiasm :  of  which 
however,  enough  remains  in  me  to  warrant  my  readers  against  the  aban 
donment  of  a  purpose  entertained  already  for  tv/enty  years.  | 

The  work,  if  1  live  to  complete  it,  will  consist  of  ten  parts,  cacti 
taking  up  some  local  division  of  Christian  history,  and  gathering,  toward{| 
their  close,  into  united  illustration  of  the  power  of  the  Church  in  thf 
Thirteenth  Century. 

The  present  volume  completes  the  first  part,  descriptive  of  the  earb 
Frank  power,  and  of  its  final  skill,  in  the  Cathedral  of  Amiens. 

The  second  part,  Ponte  della  Pietra,"  will,  I  hope,  do  more  fo 
Theodoric  and  Verona  than  I  have  been  able  to  do  for  Clovis  and  the  firs 
capital  of  France. 

The  third,  "Ara  Coeli,"  will  trace  the  foundations  of  the  Papal  power. 

The  fourth,  "  Ponte-a-Mare,"  and  fifth,  "  Ponte  Vecchio,"  will  only  wit) 
much  difficulty  gather  into  brief  form  what  I  have  by  me  of  scattered 
materials  respecting  Pisa  and  Florence. 

The  sixth,  "Valle  Crucis,"  will  be  occupied  with  the  monastic  archijj 
tecture  of  England  and  Wales.^  ' 

The  seventh,  ''The  Springs  of  Eure/'  will  be  wholly  given  to  th 
cathedral  of  Chartres. 

^  [For  the  earlier  forms  of  this  "Advice,"  see  the  Bibliographical  Note, 
above,  p.  7.]  j 

2  [For  notes  written  for  this  part,  see  below,  pp.  191  seqJ]  j 

3  [That  is,  in  Ruskin's  diaries  ;  as  nothing  sufficiently  definite  to  be  availabli 
has  now  been  found  among  his  MSS.  It  will  be  remembered,  however,  that  if 
this  edition  Ruskin's  lectures  on  the  "  Schools  of  Florence,"  which  he  had  re 
served,  have  been  published,  as  also  some  matter  additional  to  Mornings  in  Florence 
see  Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  185  seq.,  486-457.] 

*  [See  the  chapters  ''Candida  Casa"  and  "Mending  the  Sieve";  belov^ 
pp.  205-254.] 

186 


APPENDIX  III 


187 


The  eighth,  "  Domremy,"  to  that  of  Rouen  and  ^the  schools  of  archi- 
cture  which  it  represents. ^ 

The  ninth,  The  Bay  of  Uri/'  to  the  Pastoral  forms  of  Catholicism, 
aching  to  our  own  times. 

I  And  the  tenth,  "The  Bells  of  Cluse,"  to  the  pastoral  Protestantism  of 
ivoy,  Geneva,  and  the  Scottish  border. 

Each  part  will  consist  of  four  sections  only ;  and  one  of  them,  the 
urth,  will  usually  be  descriptive  of  some  monumental  city  or  cathedral, 
e  resultant  and  remnant  of  the  religious  power  examined  in  the  pre- 
iratory  chapters. 

One  illustration  at  least  will  be  given  with  each  chapter,  and  drawings 
ade  for  others,  which  will  be  placed  at  once  in  the  Sheffield  museum  for 
iblic  reference,^  and  engraved  as  I  find  support,  or  opportunity  for  bind- 
g  with  the  completed  work. 
As  in  the  instance  of  Chapter  IV.  of  this  first  part,  a  smaller  edition 
the  descriptive  chapters  will  commonly  be  printed  in  reduced  form  for 
ivellers  and  non-subscribers ;  but  otherwise,  I  intend  this  work  to  be  fur- 
shed  to  subscribers  only. 

1  [For  a  reference  to  this  intended  Part,  see  Prceterita,  i.  §  182.] 

2  [See  the  Index  to  Catalogue  of  the  Ruskin  Museum  at  Sheffield  for 
I  iwings  and  studies  rr  „  Verona,  Chartres,  and  Rouen,  as  also  for  additional 
i  jstrations  of  detailr        .miens  Cathedral  (Vol.  XXX.  pp.  289-293).] 


II 

CHAPTERS  FOR  LATER  PARTS 
^^OUR  FATHERS" 

NOTES  FOR  "ARA  CGELI"  {the  intended  Part  III.) 
Passages  in  the  Life  of  St.  Gregory 

"VALLE  CRUCIS"  {the  intended  Part  VI)'.— 

1.  Candida  Casa 

2.  Mending  the  Sieve  (1882) 


[Bibliographical  Note. — For  particulars  with  regard  to  Ara  CcpJi  (hitherto 
unprinted),  see  below,  p.  191. 

The  other  chapters  were  intended  for  the  Sixth  Part  of  Our  Fathers 
have  Told  Us  (see  above,  p.  186). 

The  first  chapter,  entitled  "  Candida  Casa,"  was  set  up  in  type  by 
Ruskin  some  years  before  it  was  published  in  the  volume  edited  for  him 
by  Mr.  W.  G.  Collingwood  under  the  title  Verona  and  other  Lectures 
(1893).  For  bibliographical  particulars  of  that  book,  in  which  "  Candida 
Casa"  occupied  pp.  77-108,  see  Vol.  XIX.  p.  427. 

An  Appendix  to  ^  Candida  Casa,'  on  Saxon  Money,"  occupied  pp.  109- 
111.  This  has  been  printed  with  Ruskin's  other  remarks  on  Coins  in 
Vol.  XXX.  p.  278. 

The  second  chapter,  also  printed  in  Verona  and  other  Lectures,  and 
there  entitled  Mending  the  Sieve,"  was  originally  written  for  a  lecture 
delivered  at  the  London  Institution  on  Monday,  December  4,  1882.  The 
lecture  was  then  entitled  ^'Cistercian  Architecture." 

A  full  abstract  of  the  lecture  (made  by  Mr.  Wedderburn  with  Ruskin's 
sanction,  and  with  the  help  of  the  MS.  lent  him  for  that  purpose),  con- 
taining several  textual  quotations  and  the  phni  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Gall, 
appeared  in  the  Art  Journal,  February  1883,  pp.  46-49.  Shorter  reports 
appeared  in  the  Times  and  Pall  Mall  Gazette^  December  5,  1882. 

Passages  in  the  Art  Journal's  report  of  the  lecture  as  delivered,  which 
were  not  reprinted,  are  now  given  in  footnotes  (see  pp.  227,  235,  242, 
245,  246). 

The  lecture,  in  a  revised  form,  had  been  set  up  in  type  by  Ruskin 
as  a  chapter  for  Valle  Crucis ;  but  was  not  published  until  it  appeared 
in  Verona  and  other  Lectures  (1893),  where  it  occupied,  with  the  Appendix 
(here,  pp.  250-254),  pp.  115-152.] 


NOTES  FOR  ^^ARA  CGELI" 


{THE  INTENDED  THIRD  PART  OF  "OUR  FATHERS 
HAVE  TOLD  US") 

[The  Third  Part  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us,  entitled  by  Ruskin  Ara 
eli,  was  to  "  trace  the  foundations  of  the  Papal  power."  ^  He  thus 
titled  it  from  the  Church  of  Santa  Maria  in  Ara  Coeli  in  R6me,  and 
rious  trains  of  thought  converged  in  his  title.  His  subject,  "the  transi- 
m  of  the  Roman  pontificate  into  the  Christian  Papacy/'  ^  had  been  briefly 
anced  at  in  The  Bible  of  Amiens.^  The  church  of  Ara  Cceli  is  itself 
witness  of  this  transition.  It  is,  says  Lanciani,  "particularly  associated 
th  the  Sibyls,  because  tradition  refers  the  origin  of  its  name  to  an  altar 
Ara  Primogeniti  Dei — raised  to  the  Son  of  God  by  the  Emperor  Augustus, 
lio  had  been  warned  of  his  advent  by  the  sibylline  books.  For  this 
ason  the  figures  of  Augustus  and  of  the  Tiburtine  Sibyl  are  painted  on 
ther  side  of  the  arch  above  the  high  altar.  They  have  actually  been 
ven  the  place  of  honour  in  this  church ;  and  formerly,  when  at  Christmas 
ne  the  Presepio  was  exhibited  in  the  second  chapel  on  the  left,  they 
cupied  the  front  row,  the  Sibyl  pointing  out  to  Augustus  the  Virgin 
id  the  Bambino  who  appeared  in  the  sky  in  a  halo  of  light."*  Ruskin, 
10  spent  the  winter  of  1840-1841  in  Rome,^  may  well  have  seen  this 
ggestive  piece  of  show ;  which,  in  his  later  thoughts,  would  have  recurred 

his  mind  in  connexion  with  his  doctrine  of  continuous  Inspiration,  as 
.pounded  in  The  Bible  of  Amiens^ — inspiration  in  the  "Sacred  classic  litera- 
Te,  running  parallel  with  that  of  the  Hebrews,  and  coalescing  in  the 
mbolic  legends  of  mediaeval  Christendom." 

With  these  deeper  thoughts,  personal  recollections  and  feelings  came 
to  Ruskin's  mind  at  the  words  "Ara  Coeli."  It  was  at  Rome  in  1840 
lat  he  had  first  seen,  then  in  the  bloom  of  her  youth  and  beauty,  the 
nglish  girl  who  in  after  years  became  one  of  his  dearest  friends  and 
a  tutelary  power"  to  him  "of  the  brightest  and  happiest."    He  describes 

Prceterita  how  he  haunted  the  churches  throughout  the  winter  because 

*  [See  Bible  of  Amiens,  Appendix  III. ;  above,  p.  186.] 

*  [Roadside  Songs,  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  119  n.] 
^  [Ch.  iii.  §  35  n.  :  see  above,  p.  107.] 

*  Pagan  and  Christian  Ro'me,  by  Rodolfo  Lanciani,  1892,  p.  24.] 
^  [See  Vol.  I.  p.  xxxviii.] 

«  [Ch.  iii.  §§  52,  53  :  see  above,  pp.  118,  119.] 

191 


192 


NOTES  FOR  **ARA  COELI 


at  musical  services  there  was  always  a  chance  of  catching  sight  of  Uhi 
Tollemache  ''above  the  bowed  heads  of  the  Italian  crowd." i  The  stepj 
of  the  Ara  Co^li  became  thus  a  sacred  spot  in  his  memory. 

But  this  was  esoteric.  The  further  significance  of  Ara  Cceli  in  hi; 
projected  history  of  Christendom  was  that  the  church  is  as  old  as  th( 
sixth  century,  when  it  was  dedicated  by  St.  Gregory  as  Sancta  Maria  ir 
Capitoho,  and  the  second  chapter  of  Ruskin's  Ara  Cceli  was  to  have  con 
tained  the  Life  of  the  great  Pope.  In  the  Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany 
Part  iii.  (published  in  1884),  Ruskin  had  expressed  his  hope  of  issuing 
in  that  year  this  chapter,  ''together  with  the  second  chapter  of  Vail 
Crucis,  containing  the  Life  of  St.  Benedict."  The  reader  will  remembe 
the  dates ;  St.  Benedict,  480-540  ;  St.  Gregory,  540-604.  The  two  chapters; 
read  together,  would  thus  have  covered  one  of  the  periods  in  the  histor 
of  Christianity  as  defined  by  Milman^ — the  period  in  which  Christianity  i 
not  only  the  religion  of  the  Roman  or  Italian,  but  in  part  of  the  bar 
barian  world;  in  which  monastic  Christianity,  having  received  a  strong 
impulse  from  St.  Benedict,  is  in  the  ascendant;  and  of  which  Gregory  I 
alike  as  Pope  and  writer,  is  the  model. 

Ruskin's  chapter  on  St.  Gregory,  however,  was  not  published,  thougl 
there  are  some  references  to  his  life  and  character  in  Roadside  Songs; 
but  among  Ruskin's  papers  is  much  material  collected  for  the  intends 
study.  Most  of  this  is  in  the  form  only  of  notes,  references,  and  memo' 
randa;  but  there  are  several  sheets  in  a  completed  form,  and  these  ar, 
here  printed.  i 

His  general  subject  was  to  have  been,  as  already  stated,  "the  transitioj 
of  the  Roman  pontificate  into  the  Christian  papacy."  He  intended  there! 
fore  to  begin  with  some  notes  on  the  character  of  Priesthood  (§§  1-j 
below) — notes  which  should  be  compared  with  the  essay  on  "The  Priest: 
Office"  in  Roadside  Songs.  He  then  passes  to  sketch  the  life  and  positio 
of  Gregory  the  Great  6-11).] 

1.  First,  then,  there  is  the  natural  priesthood  of  goo 
men  who  walk  with  God,^  and  learn  the  secrets  of  H 
Law,  and  of  Nature,  in  humility,  and  are  able  to  teach  an 
comfort,  and  help  and  feed,  the  common  flock  of  mei 
This  is  the  priesthood  of  the  Most  High  God, — withoi 
father,  without  mother,  without  descent.  Born  of  Go 
only,  a  blessing  to  the  Kings  of  the  earth, — bringing  fort 
Bread  and  wine  for  its  labourers — praying  for  all, — in  ever 
act  and   service  intended   to   express   love  towards  Go( 

1  [PrcBterita,  ii.  §  39,  iii.  §  28.] 

^  [Milman's  third  period  (from  the  death  of  Pope  Leo  the  Great,  461,  to  t 
death  of  Gregory)  :  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  Book  i.  cli.  i.  (vol.  i.  p.  2 
small  edition).] 

3  [See  Vol.  XXXII.  pp.  121-124.] 

*  [Genesis  v.  24  (Enoch) ;  vi.  9  (Noah).] 


NOTES  FOR  "ARA  C(ELI"  193 


iding  and  ministering  for  all,  and  of  whom  it  is  written, 
Holiness  becometh  Thine  House,  Oh  Lord  for  ever."^ 
16  direct  relation  of  the  Jewish  priesthood  to  this  Pontifi- 
te  of  the  World  is  expressed,  before  the  giving  of  the 
naitic  Law,  by  the  marriage  of  Joseph  to  the  daughter  of 
8  chief  priest  of  Egypt,  and  of  Moses  to  the  daughter 
the  chief  priest  of  Midian.^ 

2.  Secondly,  there  is  the  Hieratic  priesthood;  (among 
3  Jews  hereditary)  implying  no  superiority  of  intellect,  or 
I'tiness  of  moral  character;  but  merely  the  separation  in 
e|ternal  purity  and  common  honesty,  of  a  certain  race  or 
nety  of  men  for  the  care  of  the  Temples,  and  the  per- 
mance  of  material  ceremonies  of  religious  service.  No 
wer  of  teaching,  nor  any  authority  over  the  body  of  the 
Aon  except  in  the  direction  of  its  religious  acts,  and  dis- 
nment  of  the  persons  who  may  be  allowed  to  take  part 
them,  belongs  to  this  priesthood,  the  idea  and  practical 
3ncy  of  which  is  no  less  universal  than  that  of  the  greater 
i  inspired  one,  having  also,  in  powers  of  augury  from 
rifice  or  flight  of  birds,  a  minor  and  so  to  speak  prophetic 
iction.    Enoch,  Noah,  Melchizedek,  Job,  or  Daniel  need 
"auguries" — but  the  lower  priesthood  has  constantly 
o  cular  function,  though  in  many  cases  the  oracle  is  not 
ierstood  by  themselves.    The  most  beautiful  and  easily 
lembered  example  of  its  power  and  of  the  reverence 
en  to  it  by  the  great  nations  of  antiquity  is  in  the  pause 
ore  the  battle  of  Plataea;^  the  great  poetical  type  of  it 
the  Chryses  of  Horner;^  and  observe,  all  the  sorrow  of 
!  Iliad  begins  in  the  cruelty  and  insult  done  to  him  by 
i?j:amemnon.     Apollo  sends  or  stays  his  arrows   at  the 
yer  of  Chryses.     But  the  God's  own  revenge  for  his 
est  is  in  the  deathstroke  to  Patroclus.^    It  is  especially 
be  noted  that  these  Hieratic   priesthoods  are  always 

^  [Psalms  xciii.  5.] 

2  [Genesis  xli.  45  ;  Exodus  ii.  16,  21.] 

3  [See  Vol.  IV.  p.  329  n.] 

*  Compare  Roadside  Songs,  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  119  n.] 
«  [Iliad,  xvi.  788,  789.] 
XXXIII.  N 


194 


NOTES  FOR  **ARA  CCELI" 


married.  And  the  chief  poetical  and  sacred  interest  of  t\ 
legends  respecting  them  is  not  around  themselves,  but  arourj 
their  children — the  daughters  of  Chryses,  Potipherar,  ar 
Jethro; — the  son  of  Zacharias.^ 

3.  Thirdly,  the  Pontifical  priesthood,  uniting  the  servic, 
able  Hieratic  functions  with  those  of  the  Earthly  Teache 
Lawgiver,  and  Governour,  in  all  things  pertaining  to  tl 
Nation's  Health,  Holiness,  and  Honour.  Not  necessari 
prophetic  or  oracular,  but  dictating  constant  law,  and  mai, 
taining  spiritual  discipline, — spiritual  especially  in  that  tB 
relative  guilt  of  crime  is  counted  by  its  motive  and  mea 
ing,  and  the  power  of  pardon  or  of  death  remains  with  t: 
judge  who  looks  on  the  heart.^ 

"  Whose  soever  sins  ye  remit,  etc.,"^ — of  this  tremendo; 
priesthood  having  power  of  Judgment  by  Fire, — ("the  finii^f 
pot  is  for  silver,  and  the  furnace  for  gold,  but  the  Lol 
trieth  the  hearts  "  ^)  the  Israelitic  types  are  Elijah  and  Samu , 
— but  in  the  West  the  purifying  and  chastening  powers  n 
associated  with  the  long  recognized,  actively  beneficent  al 
protective  functions  of  the  Roman  Pontifex  Maximus;  al 
in  the  minds  of  all  educated  men  the  two  functions  of  1e 
priesthood,  in  divine  and  human  service,  are  symbolized  i 
their  enduring  names.  Hieratic,  from  the  word  origina)^ 
meaning  Strength^ — of  the  priesthood  set  apart  for  e 
Service  of  Heaven, — and  the  Sun  in  Heaven,  priests  >f 
the  Augur  Apollo,  and  the  Christian  Sun  of  Righteo;- 
ness ;  and  Pontifical — Builders  of  the  Bridge  from  Earth  o 
Heaven,  builders  with  stones  of  the  brook  and  wood  )f 
the  forest.  Guides  of  the  Way,  and  Hospitallers  of  ,ie 
Wayfarer.  1 

4.  The  younger  reader  will  do  well  to  learn  by  heart  |ie 

^  [Chriseis  {Iliad,  i.) ;  Asenath^  wife  of  Joseph  and  mother  of  Manasseh  id 
Ephraim  (Genesis  xlv.  50-52);  Zipporah,  wife  of  Moses  (Exodus  ii.  21);  Luke  | 

^  [1  Samuel  xvi.  7 :  compare  The  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Church,  Lettei  vi. 
<Vol.  XXXIV.).]  J 
3  [John  XX.  23.]  I 
♦  [Proverbs  xvii.  3:  see  The  Storm-Cloud,  §  82  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 
^  [According  to  Curtius,  the  primitive  notion  of  i^pbz  is  mighty,  as  with  U  (J  -iu 
vis).]  , 


NOTES  FOR  "ARA  C(ELI"  195 


itin  interpretation  of  their  name,  attaching  two  primary 
eas  to  it : — 

''A  ponte  faciendo,  nam  ab  iis  sublicius  est  pactus  primum  et  resti- 
Lis  ssepe,  cum  ideo  sacra  et  uls  et  cis  Tiberim  fiant."  * 

Subhcius — on  piles/  the  Pontifex  making  safe  what  was 
ngerous,  secure  what  was  uncertain;  architect  not  merely 
wall  or  rock, — -but  of  foundation,  amidst  wave, — builder 
pier  and  arch  alike. 

"Making  sacred  both  sides  of  Tiber,"  no  more  forbidding 
ers  to  flow  that  they  may  pass  into  their  own  narrow 
oly  Land;  but  by  bridge  or  ford  now  making  all  Races 
own  to  each  other,  and  all  Lands  Holy.t 

5.  "It  is  impossible  to  conceive  what  had  been  the 
afusion,  the  lawlessness,  the  chaotic  state  of  the  Middle 
yes,  without  the  medieeval  Papacy;  and  of  the  mediseval 
pacy  the  real  Father  is  Gregory  the  Great" — in  whose 
rson  "Monasticism  ascended  the  Papal  Throne."^ 

I  must  pause  for  a  moment  to  give  the  true  sense  of 
1 3  word  Monasticism,  which  the  reader  will  find  explained 

length  in  The  Bible  of  Amiens,^  Monasticism  is  no 
3re  essentially  Christian  than  priesthood  is ;  it  means  in 
e  fact  of  it,  refusal  to  take  part  in  the  world's  follies  and 
s,  the  exercise  of  strict  temperance,  and  the  devotion  of 

*  Adam's  Roman  Antiquities,  p.  265  ;  his  following  abstract  of  the  Ponti- 
1  duties  and  powers  cannot  be  bettered. 

I  f  I  need  not  point  out  that  the  Roman  arch  is  the  root  of  all 
jristian  building;  the  Roman  Eagle,  the  symbol  of  all  Christian  strength 
ife  shall  mount  up  with  wings  as  Eagles — As  an  Eagle  stirreth  up  her 
I't* — etc.  Compare  Dante  of  the  Kings  of  Justice  in  the  eye  of  the 
Tie  5 — in  the  natural  world,  the  white  and  yellow  Daisies, — especially 
Hawkweed  (Hieracium). 


1  [See  below,  p.  467  w.] 

^  [Milman,  History  of  Latin  Christianity^  Book  iii.  eh.  vii.  (vol,  ii,  pp.  101— 

H  [See  above,  pp.  101-105.] 

i*  [Isaiah  xl.  31 ;  Deuteronomy  xxxii.  11.] 

^  [See  Paradiso,  xx.  37-72.] 


NOTES  FOR  "AHA  COELI" 


the  energies  of  life  to  useful  labour,  to  charity,  and  ti 
religious  imagination.  All  these  three  elements  are  essenti? 
to  it — monks  who  do  not  labour  or  do  not  love  are  merel 
sects  of  madmen,  remaining  voluntarily  in  their  hospital 
and  men  who  labour  and  love  without  the  exercise  of  th] 
religious  imagination  remain  merely  virtuous  peasants.  A| 
good  priests  are  necessarily  monks ;  there  may  be  an 
number  of  monks  who  are  never  priests ;  but  the  priesi 
hood,  signifying  the  fulfilment  of  a  definitely  sacred  offid 
for  men  by  the  command  of  God,  is  no  essential  part  d 
the  monastic  institution. 

6.  The  power  of  all  Christian  monasticism  is  repn 
sented  perfectly  by  St.  Benedict,  that  of  Christian  priesi 
hood  by  St.  Gregory,  the  priest's  office  being  forced  upo 
him  by  the   choice   alike  of  the  Pope  and  the  Roma|  ; 
nation. 

He  was  born  about  540,  of  senatorial  family;  his  fath(  , 
bore  the  imperial  name  of  Gordian,  his  mother  that  (  i 
Silvia.     Pope  Felix  II.,  who  had  built  the  church  of  S  j 
Cosmo  and  Damiano  close  to  the  temple  of  Romulus,  j 
his   ancestor  in  the  fourth   degree;   two  sainted  virgin!  | 
Thyrsilla  and  Silvia,  were  his  aunts.    To  his  noble  descerj  , 
was  added  considerable  wealth,  and  all  that  wealth,  tl 
moment  he   became   master   of  it   by  the   death  of  h 
father,  was  at  once  devoted  to  religious  uses.    He  was  the 
Praetor,  thirty-four  years  old,  and  having  long  resisted  t\ 
impulse  to  contemplative  life,  lest  it  should  interfere  wit  ^ 
his  practical  usefulness  there,  he  says,  "  When  hitherto  i  !j 
had  willed  to  serve  this  present  world  at  least  in  outd  ii 
seeming,  with  my  might,  there  began  many  things  to  rifl  ^ 
against  me  out  of  that  care,  so  that  now,  it  held  me  n( 
in  seeming  only,  but  in  niind."^  , 

7.  The  sentence,  quoted  by  Milman  only  in  its  obscui  J 
Latin,  needs  to  be  explained  as  well  as  translated.    l{  - 


^  [Milman,  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  Book  iii.  ch.  vii.  (vol.  ii.  p.  103  n 
quoted  in  Latin  from  Gregory's  Preface  to  Job.] 


NOTES  FOR  «ARA  CCELI"  197 


-ve  the  world  in  seeming  =^  was  Sta.  Zita's  service;  it 
IS  possible  to  her  to  pray  always,  yet  wash  or  bake  just 
2  same.^  But  not  possible  for  a  Roman  Prastor  to  do  his 
)rk,  and  yet  pray  without  ceasing.^  Praetor's  work  must 
left  to  lay  hands. 

He  gave  his  personal  goods  at  once  to  the  poor,t  with 
1  estates  in  Sicily,  founded  six  monasteries  on  that  island; 
seventh  (founded  or  previously  existing?)  in  Rome,  he 
3se  for  his  own  retreat,  monastery  dedicated  to  St. 
idrew,  Peter's  brother. 

There  he  began  with  the  lowest  monastic  duties.  |  '*His 
ole  time  was  passed  in  prayer,  reading,  writing,  and  die- 
ion."^     If  he  began  with  the  lowest  monastic  duties, 
>st  of  his  time  must  have  been  passed  more  actively, 
far  as  I  can  gather  and  conceive  the  facts  out  of  the 
jjifused  nonsense  of  Milman's  432nd  page,*  the  young 
link  laboured,  dreamed,  and  starved  himself  nearly  to 
liith,  evincing  with  that  all  but  mortal  effort  the  hearts 
1  imaginations  of  the  brothers  round  him  and  of  all 
the  city  who  heard  of  him — so  that  the  monastery 
St.  Andrew  became  a  perpetual  scene  of  preternatural 
ader.    The  English  orthodox  Divine  thinks  it  becomes 

*  "In  seeming/'  not  hypocritically,  but  as  it  appeared  to  others — the 
id  only  seeing  her  active  service  to  it,  not  in  the  least  knowing  she 
with  her  heart  in  another  world. 

I*  Milman,  more  eloquently — or  at  least  more  loquaciously — Having 
;hed  on  the  poor  all  his  costly  robes — his  silk,  his  gold,  his  jewels,  his 
liture,"  the   historian  does  not  tell  us  what  tlie  poor  did  with  his 
liture,  or  how  his  jewels  became  them.    The  word  '^lavished,"  never 
ij'l  by  good  writers  except  of  reckless  expenditure,  expresses  the  Dean 
•ipt.  Paul's  instinctive  sense  of  the  impropriety  and  folly  of  the  whole 
)i!2eeding. 

{  Milman:   "Not  even  assuming  the  abbacy  of  his  convent,"  imply- 
that  he  had  founded  this  also.    But  I  am  yet  to  learn  that  in  those 
is  a  young  lord  who  founded  a  convent  could  assume  the  abbacy  of  it 
at  once. 


See  "The  Ballad  of  Santa  Zita"  in  Roadside  Songs,  Vol.  XXXII.  pp.  18  seq.] 
Thessalonians  v.  17.] 

Milman,  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  ii.  p.  103  (small  edition).] 
Ruskin's  reference  is  to  the  octavo  edition ;  the  passages  quoted  on  this 
are  at  vol.  ii.  pp.  102-104  of  the  small  edition.] 


NOTES  FOR  **ARA  COELI" 


him  to  be — in  such  small  cockney  manner  as  he  is  capah 
of — satirical  on  the  state  of  things  that  followed: — 

"Fugitive  monks  were  seized  upon  by  devils,  who  confessed  their  pow 
to  Gregory;  others  were  favoured  with  visits  of  angels  summoning  th(  . 
to  peace;  and  one  brother,  whose  whole  life,  excepting  the  intervals  " 
food  and  sleep,  was  spent  in  psalmody,  was  not  merely  crowned  by  ' 
visible  hands  with  white  flowers,  but  fourteen  years  after,  a  fragrance, 
of  the  concentrated  sweetness  of  all  flowers,  breathed  from  his  tomb.  Su 
was  the  poetry  of  those  days."  ^ 

8.  The  last  sentence — equally,  and  violently,  foolish  aii.  > 
false — I  must  put  well  out  of  the  reader's  way.  Whatev 
these  phenomena  were,  they  were  not  poetry.^    They  mig; 
have  been  insanity,  or  the  reports  of  them  may  be  foil,  | 
but  they  were  neither  troubadour  romances  nor  Newdigfi 
prize  poems.    Those  who  told  them,  believed  what  they  hi 
seen, — those  who  heard  them,  what  they  had  heard ;    arl  j 
whether  sane  or  insane,  some  part  of  the  related  phenome  i 

is  absolutely  true,  and  may  be  ascertained  to  be  so  ' 
any  one  who  can  bear  the  trial.  And  this  I  know  sim||^  ^ 
because  I  have  been  forced  myself  to  bear  it  not  oni 
nor  twice,  and  have  experienced  the  two  forms  of  stat , 
quickening  of  the  senses  both  of  sight  and  hearing,  and  \i 
conditions  of  spectral  vision  and  audit,  which  belong  > 
certain  states  of  brain  excitement. 

[Here  follows  in  the  MS.  a  passage  on  Gregory's  severe  discipline  s 
abbot,  which  was  used  in  Roadside  Songs  (Vol.  XXXII.  p.  122).] 

9.  While  yet  abbot  of  St.  Andrea,  Gregory  saw  13 
angelic  Northumbrian  slaves  exposed  for  sale.    "  To  be  t&  ^ 
first  missionary  to  this  beautiful  people  became  the  h(l 
ambition  of  Gregory."^    (Why  ambition,  Mr.  Dean?  can'U 

♦  Farther  on,  the  Dean  rightly  says  of  St.  Gregory's  interpretation 'f  % 
the  book  of  Job :  ^'  Of  that  book  as  a  poem,  the  most  sublime  of  H 
antiquity,  he  had  no  conception ;  to  him  it  is  all  pure,  unimaginative,  - 
embellished  history"  [p.  108]. 

^  [Milman,  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  ii.  p.  104.] 
2  [Compare  Pleasures  of  England j  §  47  ;  below,  p.  449.] 
^  [Milr^.an,  History  of  Latin  Christianity^  vol.  ii.  p.  106.] 


NOTES  FOR  "ARA  CCELI 


199 


lan  want  to  help  nice  people  without  having  any  ambition 
j)Out  it,  or  notions  of  himself  being  first  ?)  Not  ambition, 
;  r.  Dean  (and  please  observe  also,  good  reader,  once  for 
ji,  there  is  no  holy  form  of  that  feeling),  neither  in 
]  oritalembert's  prettier  phrase,  le  reve  le  plus  cher  de  son 
iae,"^  but  a  benevolent  resolution  rightly  founded,  and 
vsely  executed.  There  are  endless  repetitions  of  what 
(regory  said — unfortunately,  no  authoritative  account  of 
^lat  he  instantly  did — on  seeing  the  Northumbrians;  but 
i  e  tradition  is,  I  doubt  not,  true,  that  he  redeemed  them 
-  took  them  to  his  monastery  and  entertained  them  in 
le  Stranger's  house  there,  where  he  was  in  the  habit  of 
1  in  self  serving  the  table  of  the  poor. 

10.  And  now  I  must  weave  together  in  some  detail 
le  clues  of  this  history  of  the  conversion  of  England — it 
lay  well  befit  the  record  of  the  last  Christian  Songs  of 

The  Monastery  of  St.  Andrew  stood  on  the  site  of  the 
iicient  wood  and  spring  of  Egeria.     Roman  Lawt  and 

*  "Redeemed" — i.e.,  bought  and  set  free;  this  being  entirely  legitimate 
13  of  what  Mr.  Dean  calls  the  "common  property  of  the  Brotherhood/' ^ 
-and  the  manner  in  which  their  Money  did  not  Perish  with  them. 

•f  Montalembert's  Catholicism  most  marvellously  blinds  him  to  this  half 
I  history.  He  thinks  with  Tacitus*  the  battles  of  Boadicea  the  "initium 
]  ertatis  totius  Britanniae"  from  the  "hideuse  domination"  of  Roman 
1/:  "its  unwholesome  roots  never  wound  around,  stifled,  or  poisoned  the 
\;orous  shoots  of  civil,  political,  and  domestic  freedom.  The  same  thing 
iiy  be  said  of  all  other  similar  influences.  Neither  in  the  institutions 
ir  in  the  monuments  of  Britain  has  Imperial  Rome  left  any  trace  of  her 
lleous  domination."^  And  while  he  gives  the  feeblest  Roman  Catholic 
lidition  as  divine  gospel,  calls  in  this  very  passage  I  am  above  translat- 
the  tradition  of  Numa  and  Egeria  a  "roman  gracieux."  ^ 

*  {Les  Moines  d' Occident,  Book  xii.  ch.  ii.  (vol.  iii.  p.  o76).] 

2  [The  chapter  was  intended  (see  above,  p.  192)  to  be  read  in  connexion  with 
Id  Roadside  So7igs  of  Tuscany.'] 
'  [Milman,  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  p.  105  ;  for  the  Bible  reference,  see 
•ts  viii.  20.] 

*  [See  Annals,  xii.  34,  but  Montalembert's  quotation  is  not  textual.  Ruskin 
:  iorrectly  makes  Montalembert  apply  the  words  to  Boadicea ;  they  are  put  by 
'  citus  into  the  mouth  of  Caractacus.] 

^  [Les  Moines  d'Occident,  Book  x.  ch.  i.  (vol.  iii.  pp.  10,  11).] 
"  [Ibid.,  Book  xii.  ch.  i.  (vol.  iii.  p.  351).    The  grotto  in  which,  according  to- 
e  legend  and  Juvenal's  description  (iii.  12),  Numa  held  his  secret  meetings  with 


200 


NOTES  FOR  "ARA  CGELl" 


Christian  Kinghood  alike  begin  with  the  inspiration  o 
Numa ;  ^  and  the  providential  law  of  the  giver  of  that  spirit 
keeps  the  sign  of  their  unity  in  her  native  rock  and  native] 
spring.  At  this  day,  to  the  left  of  the  great  staircase  whicK 
conducts  to  the  existing  monastery  three  small  building; 
detach  themselves  from  the  ground  of  green.  On  the  dooi' 
of  one  we  read  the  words 

**  Triclinium  Pauperum," 

and  there  is  preserved  the  table  where  came  every  day  tc 
sit  the  twelve  poor  whom  Gregory  supported  and  servecj 
himself.  The  building  opposite  is  dedicated  to  the  memon 
of  his  mother  Silvia,  who  had  followed  his  example  ii 
devoting  herself  to  the  religious  life,  and  whose  portrait  h< 
had  caused  to  be  painted  in  the  porch  of  his  monastery. 
Between  these,  doubtless,  is  the  site,  perhaps  in  doubtfu 
vestige,  even  the  remains,  of  the  Oratory  first  consecratec 
by  St.  Gregory  when  he  left  his  fathers  house.  Am 
in  the  church  itself  is  the  altar  before  which  he  praye( 
for  England,  and  consecrated  at  which,  six  years  after  th< 
redemption  of  her  captives,  he  sent  to  her  the  Prior  of  hi 
monastery,  Augustine. 

*  Here  is  a  beginning  of  Christian  portraiture  I  had  never  though 
of,  in  any  of  my  former  notices  of  that  peculiarly  English  branch  c 
Art.2 


the  nymph  Egeria,  is  at  the  foot  of  the  Caelian  Hill,  not  far  from  S.  Gregori( 
The  springs  still  make  their  way,  and  beautiful  ilexes  flourish  on  the  very  spc 
of  the  old  Sacred  Grove  :  see  Lanciani's  Pagan  and  Christian  Rome,  pp.  293-29 
and  woodcut.  The  monastery  of  St.  Andrew  was  founded  by  Gregory  in  hi 
paternal  house  which  stood  on  the  slope  of  the  Caelian,  facing  the  palace  Cji 
the  Caesars,  on  a  street  named  the  Clivus  Scauri,  which  corresponds  very  nearll 
to  the  modern  Via  dei  SS.  Giovanni  e  Paolo.  The  place,  which  was  governed  h 
the  rule  of  St.  Benedict,  became  known  as  the  '  Monastery  of  S.  Andrew  in  th 
street  of  Scaurus.'  The  typical  plan  of  a  Roman  palace  was  not  altered;  th 
atrium,  accessible  to  the  clients  and  guests  of  the  monks,  is  described  as  haviu 
in  the  centre  'a  wonderful  and  most  salubrious  spring,'  no  doubt  the  'spring  ( 
Mercury '  of  classical  times.  It  still  exists,  in  a  remote  and  hardly  accessibl 
corner  of  tlie  garden  "  (ibid.,  p.  229).  In  this  garden,  to  the  left  of  the  atriun 
are  three  chapels,  erected  by  Gregory,  that  on  the  right  dedicated  to  S.  Silvia.] 
^  [See  above,  p.  101.] 

2  [See  Lectures  on  Art,  §  15  (Vol.  XX.  p.  31).] 


NOTES  FOR  -ARA  C(ELI" 


201 


11.  Six  years  after, — the  delay  not  of  his  own  will. 
Instantly  after  seeing  what  manner  of  men  the  North- 
jimbrians  were,  the  Abbot  resolved  to  be  himself  their 
inissionary; — obtained  the  Pope's  leave  (Pelagius  II.)  and 
jet  forth.  The  Roman  people  rose  in  grief  at  the  loss  of 
|iim,  obtained  revocation  of  the  Pope's  edict, — sent  mes- 
iengers  after  him,  who  overtook  him  at  three  days'  journey 
rom  Rome  and  brought  him  back. 

j  **And  where  now,"  goes  on  passionately  Montalembert, 
I'  is  there  the  Englishman  worthy  of  the  name,  who,  looking 
jrom  the  Palatine  to  the  Coliseum,  can  contemplate  with- 
mt  emotion  and  without  remorse  the  corner  of  Earth  from 
khich  came  to  him  the  faith  and  the  name  of  Christian, 
he  Bible  of  which  he  is  so  proud,  and  the  Church  of  which 
le  has  retained  the  phantom  ?  No  country  has  received  the 
ift  of  salvation  more  directly  from  the  Popes  and  the 
-lonks,  and  none,  alas !  has  so  soon  and  so  cruelly  betrayed 
hem."^ 

So  cruelly  !  Well  may  the  noble  Catholic  say  so.  From 
he  day  when,  at  the  word  of  Augustine,  Bertha,  and 
i^thelbert,  ten  thousand  Saxons  were  baptized  in  Medway, 
o  the  murder  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  the  history  of  the 
lind  of  England  is  written  in  her  architecture ;  that  of  her 
eart  has  yet  to  be  written.  But  of  all  the  deliberate  and 
ispassionate  crimes  recorded  among  the  contests  of  nations, 
-of  all  the  violations  of  honour,  gratitude,  justice,  and 
aercy,   ever   committed   unanimously   by  the   base — that 

1  [Ruskin  translates  from  the  French,  Les  Moines  d'Occident,  Book  xii.  ch.  i. 
■'ol.  iii.  p.  353).  The  words  of  Lanciani  {loc.  cit.,  p.  231)  may  be  added  :  Let 
s  pause  on  the  top  of  the  staircase  (leading  up  to  S.  Gregorio),  with  our  faces 
owards  the  Palatine ;  there  is  no  more  impressive  sight  in  the  whole  of  Rome, 
rom  the  hill  beyond  us  the  generals  who  led  the  Roman  armies  to  the  conquest 
f  the  world  took  their  departure  ;  from  this  modest  monastery  went  a  handful 
f  humble  missionaries  who  were  to  preach  the  gospel  and  to  bring  civilization 
ito  countries  far  beyond  the  boundary  line  of  the  Roman  Empire.  O"  their 
jiccess  in  the  British  Islands  we  have  monumental  evidence  everywhere  in  Rome, 
lere  in  the  vestibule  of  this  very  church  is  engraved  the  name  of  Sir  Edward 
larne,  one  of  the  Commissioners  sent  by  Henry  VIII.  to  obtain  the  opinion  of 
loreign  universities  respecting  his  divorce  from  Catherine  of  Arragon ;  and,  not  far 
rom  it,  that  of  Robert  Peckham,  who  died  in  1567,  an  exile  for  his  faith,  and 
ift  his  substance  to  the  poor."] 


202 


NOTES  FOR  "ARA  CGELI" 


murder,  so  far  as  I  have  knowledge,  is  the  cruellest.  And 
with  the  betrayal  of  Joan  of  Arc  to  us  by  the  French,  it 
is  being  avenged  on  both  nations  to  this  day.  For  the 
French  and  English  are  one,  in  this  history,  root  and  branch 
Augustine's  mission  had  been  vain  but  for  the  already 
Christian  queen.  Bertha,  the  great  granddaughter  of  St 
Clothilde.  Then,  Saxon  Alfred,  Plantagenet  Black  Prince 
and  Parisian  St.  Louis  mean  the  History  of  France  anc 
England,  for  that  time.  Charlemagne  means  the  History 
of  Europe. 

But  the  close  of  the  Pope's  letter  to  the  Queen,  writter 
on  receiving  the  news  of  her  kindness  to  his  missionaries 
ought  to  be  remembered  by  every  French  and  Englisl 
gii4 :  "  I  pray  God  that  the  finishing  of  your  work  ma} 
give  as  much  joy  to  the  angels  in  Heaven  as  I  owe  yoi 
already  on  earth."  ^  In  this  gladness,  he  chose  out  anothe 
group  of  missionaries,  and  sent  them  to  England  with  al 
such  treasures  as  could  make  the  service  of  the  Churcl 
stately,  but  above  all  with  books  for  the  founding  of  th( 
library  of  Canterbury.^ 

[Here  the  MS.  breaks  off.] 

[A  NOTE  ON  MONTALEMBERT 

[Ruskin,  as  will  have  been  seen,  used  Montalembert  a  good  deal  in  this  chapter 
Elsewhere  among  his  papers  is  a  sheet  (headed  "Araceli — Fair  text")  containing  th' 
following  appreciation  of  the  author  of  Les  Moines  d'Occident.  Other  reference 
to  him  will  be  found  in  The  Pleasures  of  England,  §§  33,  34  (below,  pp.  439,  440) 
and  in  a  letter  of  April  2,  1886,  on  "The  Life  of  St.  Patrick,"  now  included  ii 
Arrows  of  the  Chace  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

Montalembert  is  the  most  graceful,  glowing,  and,  in  affectionate  sym 
pathy,  the  most  to  be  trusted  of  Catholic  historians,  in  his  records  of  Catho]i( 
affairs.  He  loses  all  rank  and  usefulness  as  a  general  historian,  in  his  in 
conceivable  hatred  of  Pagan  Rome.  He  becomes  blind  and  deaf  to  a  poin 
incredible  in  a  man  of  education,  the  moment  he  thinks  of  imperial  Rome 
The  sentence  into  which  he  is  thus  betrayed  (vol.  iii.  p.  11)  respecting 
British  civilization,  "Tout  ce  qui  n'cst  pas  Celtique  y  est  Teutonique,"  is  th{ 

^  [Les  Moines  d' Occident,  Book  xii.  ch.  ii.  (vol.  iii.  p.  879).] 

*  [For  this  reference,  see  Roadside  Songs,  Vol.  XXXII.  pp.  121-122.] 


NOTES  FOR  "ARA  CCELI"  203 

I 

bsurdest,  wildest,  and  blindest  I  ever  found  yet  in  the  writings  of  any 
onourable  historian.  The  key  to  the  passionate  religious  convictions  which 
ictated  it  is  given  in  the  preceding  and  following  sentences  :  "  Pas  plus 
ans  les  institutions  que  dans  les  monuments  de  la  Bretagne,  Rome 
mperiale  n'a  laisse  aucune  trace  de  sa  hideuse  domination.  La  langue  (!) 
t  les  moeurs  lui  ont  echappe  comme  les  lois.  Tout  ce  qui  n'est  pas 
!eltique  y  est  Teutonique.  II  etait  reserve  a  Rome  catholique,  a  la  Rome 
es  papes,  d'imprimer  une  ineffaceable  empreinte  sur  cette  ile  celebre,  et 
'y  revendiquer,  pour  Timmortelle  majeste  de  I'Evangile,  Tinfluence  sociale 
ui  partout  ailleurs  lui  a  ete  disputee  ou  derobee  par  Fheritage  fatal  de 
\  Rome  des  Cesars."  Observe,  however,  such  a  furiously  false  statement 
s  this  can  only  be  fallen  into  by  an  honest  historian — i.e.,  one  who  is  not 
n  his  guard  because  he  believes  himself  teaching  invincible  truth.  A 
ishonest  one,  who  is  writing  either  for  his  own  glory  or  for  a  cause  which 
e  is  retained  by  worldly  interests  to  defend,  does  not  fall  into  faults  like 
liis,  but  labours  his  guarded  phrases  into  modified  and  cunning  misrepre- 
3ntations — the  guiltiest  and  basest  forms  of  deliberate  blasphemy. 


VALLE  CRUCIS: 


STUDIES  IN  MONASTIC  HISTORY  AND 
ARCHITECTURE 

{CHAPTERS  FOR  THE  INTENDED  SIXTH  PART  OF 
''OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US") 

I 

CANDIDA  CASA 

.  In  the  most  finished  of  the  poems  which  Wordsworth 
iedicated  to  the  affections, — Lucy  Gray,^ — the  most  descrip- 
ive  also  of  the  local  English  character  of  which  his  works 
re  the  monument  at  once,  and  epitaph, — I  would  pray  any 
»f  my  elder  readers  cognizant  of  the  grace  of  literature, 
0  consider  a  little  the  power  of  the  line  in  the  introduc- 
ory  stanzas, — "The  Minster-Qlook  has  just  struck  two," — 
>artly  to  enhance,  partly  to  localize,  the  aspect  of  moun- 
ain  solitude  which  the  rest  of  the  poem  is  intended  to 
lescribe;  and  to  associate  with  it  in  the  readers  thought, 
mother  manner  of  solitude,  no  less  pathetic,  belonging  to 
nore  ancient  time. 

2.  For,  suppose  that  the  verse  had  allowed,  and  the 
)oet  used,  the  word  ''Cathedral"  instead  of  Minster? 
'  Cathedral "  is  the  more  musical  word  of  the  two,  and 
lefines  no  less  clearly  the  relation  of  the  wild  moor  to  the 
nhabited  plain  with  its  market-city.  But  the  reader  of 
'ultivated  taste  would  feel  in  a  moment,  not  only  that  the 
ine  itself  had  lost  its  total  value  by  the  substitution,  but 

^  [For  other  references  to  the  poem,  see  Vol,  XXXII.  p.  136  n.] 

205 


206 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


that  the  purity  and  force  of  the  entire  poem  were  seriously 
impaired. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  force  of  evidence 
given,  in  this  slight  trial,  of  the  affection  and  respect  with  ! 
which  all  remaining  traces  and  memories  of  the  monastic  i 
life  of  our  country  are  regarded  by  the  scholarly  and  i 
healthy  Enghsh  mind :  by  all  educated  men,  that  is  to  say/  i 
whose  habits  of  life  and  tones  of  temper  have  not  been  i 
perverted  by  avarice,  ambition,  or  sensuality. 

3.  On  the  other  hand,  that  most  deadly  form  of  alli  i 
ambition,  the  religious  one,  which  is  the  root  of  schismJ  ji 
manifests  itself  most  furiously,  as  most  ignorantly,  in  those'  1 
states  of  temper  which  are  chiefly  antagonistic  to  the 
monastic  life :  while  the  avarice,  which  is  at  once  the  demon,  i 
and  torture  of  the  modern  laic  mind,  beginning,  as  of  old. 
with  the  pillage  of  whatever  the  piety,  wisdom,  and  sorrow 

of  its  ancestors  had  bequeathed  to  houses  of  charity,  eon-|  % 
eludes  in  a  fierceness  of  steady  enmity  to  the  monkish  char-|  jl 
acter  and  principle — past  or  present — the  like  of  which  has 
not,  so  far  as  I  am  acquainted  with  history,  been  ever  till 
now  recorded  in  all  the  darkest  annals  of  human  malice. 

4.  I  have  devoted  these  chapters  to  showing  some  pari 
of  the  ground  on  which  English  respect  for  the  formei 
monks  of  England,  ineradicable  by  our  anger,  and  inefface- 
able by  our  folly,  was  originally  and  for  ever  founded :  but  I 
must  first  divide  the  space  of  English  history  which  this 
section  of  my  book^  includes,  into  the  periods  which  my 
younger  readers  will  find  the  most  clearly  limited  foi 
successive  examination. 

In  doing  this,  I  must  introduce  reference  not  to  times 
only,  but  to  countries,  and  to  distinctions  of  race,  which 
require  to  be  held  in  mind  together  with  the  general 
chronology;  and  which  force  us  to  break  up  that  chron- 
ology into  pieces  that  sometimes  overlap  one  another,  and 
sometimes  leave  interstices  between  one  another.    Thus,  it 

^  [Valle  CruciSf  the  sixth  part  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us,  of  which  only  this 
chapter  and  the  next  were  completed.] 


I.  CANDIDA  CASA 


207 


quite  easy  to  constitute  a  broad  first  period  of  "British" 
c  "  British  Isle  "  Christianity,  from  the  death  of  Boadicea, 
.D.  61,  to  the  arrival  of  the  Saxons,  in  449.  But  this 
^ritish  Christianity  is  itself  separated  into  the  three  minor 
ynasties  ; — "  English " — that  is  to  say,  of  the  English 
)wlands ;  British,  of  the  mountain  districts  of  Cornwall, 
Tales,  and  Cumberland ;  and  lernic^  extending  from  the 
□rth  of  Ireland  across  into  Scotland  and  down  into 
orthumberland.  These  are  three  entirely  separate  well- 
eads  of  the  Christian  Faith,  represented  both  essentially 
nd  historically  in  the  persons  of  St.  Alban,  King  Arthur, 
(id  St.  Columba;  and  the  Saxon  invasion  terminates  the 
ow  of  none,  though  it  presents  a  new  condition  of  em- 
ankment,  and  new  fields  for  irrigation,  to  all.  I'o  outward 
ppearance,  however,  the  Lowland  religion  vanishes  under 
le  Saxon  sword  :  and  that  of  the  British  mountain  border 
asses  into  the  spiritual  energy  of  tradition  only:  while 
:iat  of  Ireland  and  Scotland  rises  into  the  most  splendidly 
ractical  missionary  power  ;  and,  so  far  from  being  checked 
y  Saxon  barbarism,  is  at  its  own  culminating  height  in 
lie  seventh  century! 

5.  Understanding,  by  this  first  example,  the  impossibility 
f  bringing  our  subject  within  merely  chronological  limits, 
he  reader  will  find  it  nevertheless  convenient  to  arrange  the 
tudies  belonging  to  the  religion  of  his  own  country  under 
hese  following  successive  heads,  and  spaces  of  time : — 

(1.)  The  British  period  :  that  of  the  progress  of  religious  feeling  in 
England,  from  the  death  of  Boadicea  to  the  landing  of  Hengist. 
A.D.  61—449. 

(2.)  The  lernic  *  period :  that  of  the  missionary  force  of  Ireland  and 
Scotland,^  from  the  birth  of  St.  Patrick  to  the  death  of  St. 
Cuthbert.  372—687. 

(3.)  The  Heptarchy,  and  gathering  of  England.    449 — 829. 

*  I  am  forced  to  use  the  word  lernic  rather  than  "  Irish,"  because  this 
atter  word  w^ould  now  imply  separation  from  Scotland,  whereas  the  methods 


*  [lerne  was  Strabo's  name  for  Ireland,  which  he  conceived  to  be  to  the  north 
3f  Britain  (Book  i.  ch  i.,  etc.).] 

'  [Compare  Pleasures  of  England,  §  28  (below,  p.  435).] 


1 


208 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


(4.)  The  youth  of  England  and  her  education  by  Alfred,  Canute,  an 

the  Confessor.  849—1066. 
(5.)  The  training  of  England,  under  her  French  kings,  from  the  battl^ 

of  Hastings  to  the  deposition  of  the  son  of  the  Black  PrincJ 

1066—1399. 

(6.)  The  Fates  of  the  House  of  Lancaster.  1399—1461. 

Of  these  dates  the  young  student  should  commit  t< 
memory  only  the  cardinals,  61,  449,  1066,  1461,  whicl, 
bound  the  three  great  periods  of  British,  Saxon,  am 
Norman  Christianity ;  and  he  may  mass  these  three  period 
still  more  broadly  in  his  mind  as  extending  from  the  firs 
to  the  fifth  century  inclusive,  from  the  fifth  to  the  tent) 
inclusive,  and  from  the  tenth  to  the  fifteenth  inclusive 
the  fifteenth  century  closing  in  England,  as  elsewhere,  th 
history  of  Christendorn, — that  is  to  say,  of  the  dominior 
of  Christ  in  all  matters  temporal  and  spiritual  over  th 
nation's  acts  and  heart. 

6.  And  we  shall  find  this  division  still  more  vital  aiK 
serviceable,  as  we  examine  the  history  of  those  arts  whicl 
are  the  exponents  of  religion.  For  during  the  first  of  them 
the  progressive  art  of  England  is  merely  the  adoption  o 
that  of  Rome,  with  what  refracted  influence  could  througl 
her  be  received  from  Greece :  but  between  the  fifth  am 
tenth  centuries,  the  school  of  Saxon  art  develops  itsel 
with  a  freedom  of  manner  and  a  fulness  of  meaning  whicl 
might  have  led — no  one  can  say  how  far,  unless  it  hm 
been  repressed  by  the  Normans.^  Their  invasion  congeal 
the  Saxon  fluency,  condenses  their  spiritualism,  and  th. 
transitions  of  style  in  our  religious  architecture  are  thence 
forward  either  in  sympathy  with  the  French  schools,  or,  S( 
far  as  independent,  become  so  only  by  narrowness  of  aim 
as  in  the  development  of  effect  by  mere  depth  of  moulding 
and  grace  of  archivolt-curve,  in  Early  English  Gothic. 

of  decoration  which  I  call  lernic,  (because  their  spring  is  in  Ireland,)  ar 
developed  by  St.  Columba  in  Scotland,  and  carried  by  St.  Columbanus  int< 
Burgundy,  whence  crossing  the  Alps,  they  receive  their  final  and  lovelies 
forms  at  Monte  Cassino,  in  the  thirteenth  century. 

^  [Compare  Pleasures  of  England,  §  69  (below,  p.  464).] 


1.  CANDIDA  CASA 


209 


Massing  therefore  in  our  minds,  so  far  as  we  are  con- 
-ned  with  the  progress  of  technical  design,  the  entire 
ice  of  time  through  which,  here  in  our  own  island, 
rjmual  skill  developed  itself  under  Christian  impulses, — 
o  five  centuries  of  British,  five  centuries  of  Saxon,  and 
e  centuries  of  Norman,  art — periods  not  at  all  gradated 
o  each  other,  nor  even  much  mingling  with  or  mortised 
o  each  other,  but  each  of  them  outlined  with  heraldic 
icision, — we  note  within  them,  in  the  order  above  given, 
3  vital  conditions  of  advance. 

7.  (1)  The  British  Period:^  the  beginning,  that  is  to 
%  of  the  influence  of  Christianity  in  the  island  of  Britain. 

which  there  are  of  course  two  stages — first,  the  fall  of 
uid  faith  before  the  classic  gods  of  the  Romans — the 
xods "  of  Lear  and  Cymbeline ;  and  secondly,  the  diffu- 
n  amidst  Roman  law  and  civil  luxury,  of  the  fresh  and 
ent  faith  in  Christ. 

These  two   states   of  the  national   mind  have  been, 
ange  to  say,  of  all  that  England  has  passed  through, 
ist  fruitful  and  enduring  among  us  at  this  day.  The 
ition  of  literature  and  art  to  the  religion  of  the  Saxon 
>  passed  altogether  from   our  own, — the  red   cross  of 
»rman  devotion  is  on  the  English  knight's  breast  only 
order  of  merit,  and  has  been  effaced  utterly  from  the 
nidonal  coin,  while   the  proud  legend  of  the  Protestant 
nj>narchy,  "FID.  DEF." — shortened  already  to  its  initials,^ 
i.'liikely  soon  also  to  disappear.    But  the  natural  virtue  of 
Cjrdelia  and  Imogen  remains  still  the  standard  of  honour 
tl  British  maid  and  wife,^  and  the  Christianity  of  Arthur 
i}  still  the  inspiration  of  our  noblest  British  song.* 

[The  rest  of  tliis  chapter  is  devoted  to  this  period;  the  Saxon  (2)  and  the 
N*man  (8)  periods  were  to  have  heen  dealt  with  in  subsequent  portions  of  Owr 
1 1  hers  have  Told  Vs.] 

^  [Compare  Ruskin's  remarks  on  the  coins  of  Elizabeth  in  the  catalogue  of  the 
S  fiield  Museum  (Vol.  XXX.  p.  277).  See  also,  below,  p.  367-  It  may  be  noted  that 
0  the  coinage  of  Edward  VII.  "Fid.  Def."  has  been  further  shortened  to  "F.D."] 

!^  [See,  again^  below,  p.  441 ;  and  on  the  ideals  of  Cordelia  and  Imogen^, 
l\serpma,  Vol.  XXV.  pp.  416,  418.] 

*  [For  another  reference  to  the  "Morte  d' Arthur,"  see  below,  p.  271  ;  and 

mentions  of  the  legends  of  Arthur,  pp.  441,  462.] 

XXXIII,  o 


210 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


8.  One  of  the  most  singular  proofs  of  the  energy  c 
this  early  British  religion,  is  the  force  and  the  precisio! 
of  its  heresy.  It  is  absolutely  necessary,  amidst  the  endlej, 
petty  confusions  of  doctrinal  dispute,  that  the  careful  reade 
of  Church  history  should  know  the  vital  from  the  verkj 
questions,  and  the  practical  heresies  from  the  speculative.^ 
Disputes  concerning  the  nature  of  God  are  in  their  natuii 
endless ;  but  those  concerning  the  duty  of  man  may  bl 
settled  by  reason  and  experience. 

The  essentially  British  heresy,  the  Pelagian — that  me 
can  save  themselves  by  the  exertion  of  their  own  will,  ani 
do  not  need  the  calling  or  grace  of  God — is  also  the  essei! 
tially  practical  one — an  extremely  healthy  heresy,  to  m 
thinking,  and  one  half  of  it  quite  true;  for  indeed  the  wi 
of  a  man  to  do  his  best  is  like  the  staunchness  of  mas 
and  trim  of  sail  in  a  good  ship,  without  which  the  rudd<! 
is  of  no  avail; — but  the  other  half  of  the  wisest  men 
creed  in  this  matter,  that  "it  is  God  that  worketh  in  u 
both  to  will  and  to  do,  of  His  good  pleasure,"^  is  til 
essentially  Christian  half ; — and  as  such,  fought  for  by  tl| 
French  orthodox  bishops,  against  the  strong,  saucy,  ai]| 
plausible  British  heresy,  in  a  most  impatient  and  diligei 
manner. 

9.  And  as  the  vigour  of  our  heresy,  so  also  was  tl 
vigour  of  our  work.  This  first  phase  of  British  histoi 
is,  of  course,  exactly  co-existent  with  the  duration  of  tl 
Roman  Empire ;  and  in  the  importance  of  its  civil  progre 
there  has  been  nothing  since  to  compare  with  it.  Undl 
the   protection    of  the   Romans,   ninety-two  considerab 

*  All  heresies  which  have  widely  and  enduringly  divided  the  Chur 
may  be  wisely  and  usefully  massed  under  three  heads : — 

On  the  nature  of  Man,  Pelagian,  v/ith  antagonist  St.  Augustine. 

On  the  nature  of  Goa,  Arian,  with  antagonist  St.  Athanase.^  \ 

On  the  nature  of  Duty,  Lutheran,  with  antagonists  St.  Peter  and  i: 
James.  "  \ 

^  [Philippiaris  ii.  VS.] 
[On  the  Pelagian  and  Arian  heresies,  see  further,  below,  p.  428 ;  and  J 
other  references  to  the  former,  see  Fors  Ciavigera,  Letter  96  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  51 
and  below,  p.  226.] 


I.  CANDIDA  CASA 


211 


•wns  had  arisen  in  the  several  parts  of  England,  and 
nong  these 

hirty-three  cities  were  distinguished  by  their  superior  privileges  and  im- 
rtance.  Each  of  these  cities,  as  in  all  the  other  provinces  of  the  empire, 
"jned  a  legal  corporation  for  the  purpose  of  regulating  their  domestic  policy, 
■  d  the  powers  of  municipal  government  were  distributed  among  annual 
:  igistrates,  a  select  senate,  and  the  assembly  of  the  people,  according  to  the 
I  ginal  model  of  the  Roman  constitution.  The  habits  of  public  counsel  and 
I  airaand  were  inherent  in  these  petty  republics,  and  the  episcopal  synods 
Tre  the  only  councils  that  could  pretend  (as  distinguished  from  them)  to 
\\i  weight  and  authority  of  a  national  assembly.  In  such  councils,  when 
i  3  princes  and  magistrates  sat  promiscuously  with  the  bishops,  the  im- 
|irtant  affairs  of  the  State  as  well  as  of  the  Church  might  be  freely  debated, 
'd  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  in  moments  of  extreme  danger  a  Pen- 
gon  or  Dictator  was  elected  by  the  general  consent  of  the  Britons."* 

j  10.  To  my  own  mind,  this  form  of  "  British  constitution  " 
I  sms  extremely  preferable  to  some  of  our  more  recent  ideals 
much  more,  to  their  realizations;  but  it  is  a  most  material 
iiestion  to  determine  how  far  it  was  an  artificial  and  im- 
essed  form  only ;  and  how  far  a  natural  and  crystalline  one. 

I  have  above  given  the  date  of  the  death  of  Boadicea 
r  the  beginning  of  the  British  Christian  period,  because 
e  temper,  which  under  that  Queen  had  displayed  itself 
i  the  torture  of  the  most  beautiful  and  high-born  ladies 
1  Rome,  is  by  her  death  brought  finally  under  the  tem- 
I  )ral  and  spiritual  power  of  Rome  :  temporal  instantly,  by 
gricola — spiritual  gradually,  by  missionary  and  captain  alike, 
i)wn  to  Constantius.    Moulded  by  these  Roman  influences 

what  she  was  at  the  fall  of  the  empire,  she  remained  and 
mains  in  some  measure  the  same,  even  through  Saxon 
jid  Norman  days,  to  our  own — so  far  as  this  Roman  law 
in  her  heart,  and  Roman  pride  in  her  nature. 

11.  Taking  then  the  death  of  "Lioness  Boadicea," 
D.  61,  for  the  beginning  of  Christendom  in  England,  I 
tail  take  the  words  of  the  reputed  earliest  English  his- 
>rian,  Gildas,  for  the  first  of  our  English  history. 

Prefatorily,  be  this  much  said  of  Gildas  himself, — that 

*  Gibbon  [ch.  xxxi.],  vol.  v.  pp.  349-352,  with  omission  of  irrelevant 
itter. 


212 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


nothing  is  known  of  him,  and  all  that  is  said,  contradicteci 
instantly;  but  that  his  book  exists,  undeniable,  substantial! 
and  pleasantly  readable, — altogether  good,  right,  and  modesi 
in  temper,  ingenious  and  graceful  in  thought,  quoting  no 
thing  but  the  Bible,  and  to  be  received  as  one  among  th( 
sacredest  of  writings  founded  on  the  Bible. 

Of  which  book  the  author  himself  says,  that  "  in  zeal  fo 
the  house  of  God  and  for  His  holy  law,  constrained  aliki 
by  the  reasonings  of  my  own  thoughts  and  the  entreatiej 
of  my  brethren,  I  now  discharge  the  debt  so  long  exactec 
of  me,  humble  indeed  in  style,  but  faithful,  as  I  think 
and  friendly  to  all  Christ's  youthful  soldiers." 

The  title  of  the  first  translation    is  as  follows : — 

"The  Epistle  of  Gildas,  the  most  ancient  British  author,  who  flourished  i 
the  year  of  our  Lord  546,  and  who  by  his  great  erudition,  sanctity,  an 
wisdom,  acquired  the  name  of  Sapiens,  the  wise." 

12.  Of  which  let  us  take,  for  outset  of  instruction,  thi 
following  description  of  the  Island  of  Britain,  poised  iij 
the  divine  balance  which  supports  the  whole  world": — 

"  It  is  famous  for  eight-and-twenty  cities,  and  is  embelhshed  by  certai 
castles,  with  walls,  towers,  well-barred  gates,  and  houses  with  threatenin 
battlements  built  on  high,  and  provided  with  all  requisite  instruments  ( 
defence.  Its  plains  are  spacious,  its  hills  are  pleasantly  situated,  adapte 
for  superior  tillage,  and  its  mountains  are  admirably  calculated  for  the  alte 
nate  pasturage  of  cattle,  where  flowers  of  various  colours,  trodden  by  th 
feet  of  man,  give  it  the  appearance  of  a  lovely  picture.  It  is  deckec 
like  a  man's  chosen  bride,  with  divers  jewels,  with  lucid  fountains,  an 
abundant  brooks  wandering  over  the  snow-white  sands  ;  with  transparei 
rivers,  flowing  in  gentle  murmurs,  and  offering  a  sweet  pledge  of  slumbfj 
to  those  who  recline  upon  their  banks,  whilst  it  is  irrigated  by  abundar 
lakes,  which  pour  forth  cool  torrents  of  refreshing  water. 

This  island,  stiffs-necked  and  stubborn-minded  from  the  time  of  i 
being  first  inhabited,  ungratefully  rebels,  sometimes  against  God,  sometim( 
against  her  own  citizens,  and  frequently,  also,  against  foreign  kings  an 
their  subjects." 

*  London,  12mo,  l638.  I  use  throughout  Mr.  Giles's  translation,  Bohi 
1841,  which,  with  the  series  of  which  it  forms  a  part,  should  be  in  evei 
student's  library. ^ 

^  [Bohns  Antiquarian  Library.  The  particular  volume  quoted  here  by  lluski 
is  entitled  Sioc  Old  English  Chronicles  .  .  .  edited  by  J.  A.  Giles,  D.C.L.  Ruski 
quotes  from  pp.  vii.,  299-300.] 


I.  CANDIDA  CASA 


213 


Under  this  impression  of  our  national  character,  (not 
];ely,  it  seems  to  me,  to  have  been  less  distinct  had  Gildas 
l  ed  in  these  days,)  the  historian  gradually  saddens  to 
jirerer  thoughts  of  the  land  itself,  and  advising  us,  a  few 
satences  further  on,  that,  after  Boadicea's  defeat,  it  was  no 
liger  thought  to  be  Britain,  but  a  Roman  island,  and  all 
i  money,  whether  of  copper,  gold,  or  silver,  was  stamped 
Uh  Caesar's  image,  tells  of  its  dawn  of  Christian  faith  in 
iese  terms: — 

"  Meanwhile  these  islands,  stiff  with  cold  and  frost,  and  in  a  distant 
il^ion  of  the  world,  remote  from  the  visible  sun,  received  the  beams  of 
I  ht,  that  is,  the  holy  precepts  of  Christ, — who  is  the  true  Sun,  and  who 
5  )ws  to  the  whole  world  His  splendour,  not  only  from  the  temporal  firma- 
I  nt,  but  from  the  height  of  heaven,  which  surpasses  every  thing  temporal, 
-  it  the  latter  part,  as  we  know,  of  the  reign  of  Tiberius  Caesar,  by  whom 
]  s  religion  was  propagated  without  impediment,  and  death  threatened  to 
i  jse  who  interfered  with  its  professors."  ^ 

Meaning  by  Tiberius,  doubtless,  the  first  Claudius,  by 
^iiom  a  Koman  colony  was  founded  at  Camelodunum  in 
.D.  43,  just  before  Boadicea's  revolt;  between  which  time 
j  d  A.D.  61  I  note  only,  among  the  many  persons  reported 
1  tradition  to  have  brought  Christianity  to  England,  two, 
(  whose  existence,  and  the  place  and  manner  of  it,  there 
i  no  doubt. 

The  first,  the  beautiful  British  lady,  Claudia,  the  wife 
(  Pudens,  and  St.  Paul's  friend  (2  Tim.  iv.  21),  celebrated 
] '  Martial  for  her  beauty  and  wit ;  the  second,  Pomponia 
<  rascina,  the  wife  of  the  first  governor  of  the  Roman  pro- 
nce  formed  by  Claudius  in  South  Britain.  I  give  Henry's 
anslation  of  Tacitus'  account  of  her,  with  his  following 
l^mment : — 

"'Pomponia  Graecina,  an  illustrious  lady,  married  to  Plautius,  who  w^as 
noured  with  an  ovation  or  lesser  triumph  for  his  victories  in  Britain, 
IS  accused  of  having  embraced  a  strange  and  foreign  superstition ;  and 

*  Henry,  i.  126;  whose  suggestion  respecting  Pomponia  is  in  the  pre- 
ding  page.2 

^  [Gildas  (as  quoted  above),  §  7,  p.  302.] 

^  [Robert  Henry's  Histoi'y  of  Great  Britain,  1771.  The  passages  in  Martial  are 
13,  and  xi.  53.] 


214 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


her  trial  for  that  crime  was  committed  to  her  husband.  He,  accordin 
to  ancient  law  and  custom,  convened  her  whole  family  and  relations,  an^ 
having,  in  their  presence,  tried  her  for  her  life  and  fame,  pronounced  he 
innocent  of  anything  immoral.  Pomponia  lived  many  years  after  this  tria 
but  always  led  a  gloomy,  melancholy  kind  of  life.' ^ 

"  It  is  highly  probable  that  the  strange  superstition  of  which  Pomponil 
was  accused,  was  Christianity;  for  the  Roman  writers  of  these  times  knev 
very  little  of  that  religion,  and  always  speak  of  it  in  such  slight  cor 
temptuous  terms.  The  great  innocence  of  her  manners,  and  the  kind  { 
life  which  she  had  led  after  her  trial,  render  this  still  more  probabh 
Now,  if  this  illustrious  lady  was  really  a  Christian,^  and  accompanied  he 
husband  during  his  residence  in  Britain,  from  a.d.  43  to  a.d.  47,  sh 
might  be  one  of  the  first  who  brought  the  knowledge  of  Christ  into  thil 
island,  and  might  engage  some  of  the  first  preachers  of  the  Gospel  b 
come  into  it  in  this  very  early  period." 

Without  pressing  this  conjecture  too  far,  still  less  th 
tradition  that  St.  Paul  himself  before  his  death  visited  hot] 
Britain  and  Spain — of  which  there  is  considerable  evidence 
and  no  disproof^ — this  at  least  is  sure,  that  the  continual!] 
increasing  intercourse  between  Rome  and  Britain  must  hav 
brought  with  it  manifold  seeds  of  Christianity,  and  **as  th 
conquest  of  South  Britain  was  completed  by  the  Roman 
before  the  end  of  the  first  century,  we  have  reason  t< 
think  that  the  name  and  rehgion  of  Christ  were  known,  ii 
some  degree,  in  almost  every  corner  of  that  country,  abou 
the  beginning  of  the  second."^ 

From  that  time  forward,  we  have  two  separate  current 
of  formative  energy  in  the  British  people — a  certain  numbe 
of  little  known  Christian  persons,  increasing  unawares,  an( 
dimly  influencing  those  near  them  ;  while  the  mass  of  th< 
nation  was  learning  what  it  could  of  the  Gods,  the  laws 
and,  as  aforesaid,  the  proud  mind,  of  Rome. 

13.  How  far  in  the  future  the  noble  pride  of  Rome  dit 
remain  for  her  bequest  to  Britain,  can  best  be  judged  b} 
Shakespeare's  perfect  rendering  of  the  character  of  Corio 
lanus,  and  his  easy  and  infallible  sympathy  with  even 

^  [Annals,  xiii.  82.] 

^  [An  hypothesis  which  is  rendered  almost  certain  by  the  discovery  of  th* 
mime  Poniponius  Grsecinus  in  the  cemetery  of  Callixtus  :  see  Lanciani's  Pagan  am 
Christian  Rome,  1892,  p.  9.] 

'  [See  on  the  subject  Henry's  History  of  Great  Britain,  vol.  i.  pp.  129-181.] 

*  [Henry  (as  quoted  above),  vol.  i.  p.  135.] 


I 


I.  CANDIDA  CASA 


215 


ntive  of  heroism,  and  majesty  of  race,  by  which  Rome 
I  d  lived,  and  in  the  forfeiture  of  which  she  fell.  The 
Iree  tragedies  of  Coriolanus,  Ceesar,  and  Antony,  are  all 
]  sed  on  the  excess,  or  defeat,  of  pride :  Coriolanus  showing 
l>w  it  changes  into  selfishness, — Csesar,  how  it  passes  into 
iipiety,  (all  the  insolence  of  succeeding  emperors  gathered 
ito  the  words  by  which  he  pronounces  his  own  death, — 

"I  do  know  but  one. 
That  unassailable  holds  on  his  rank, 
Unshamed  of  motion ;  and  that  I  am  he,"  — 

ad  Antony,  the  disgrace  of  it  by  lower  passion.  But  with 
1  e  gentleness  by  which  this  pride  was  tempered  in  the 
^acious  emperors  who  redeemed  the  state  in  the  third 
•  ntury,  and  made  Rome  capable  of  becoming  the  centre 
<j  Christianity,  Shakespeare  himself  had  little  sympathy; 
ad  the  reader  of  mere  history  has  no  chance  of  compre- 
jinding  it,  under  the  mass  of  horror  which  alone  attracts 

le  vulgar  historian. 
14.  Of  these  gracious  emperors,  the  first,  Claudius  the 

acian,"^  best  exhibits  the  new  virtue  of  Justice  in  pity 

stead  of  anger,  whose  ensign  of  the  Cross  was  so  soon  to 

se  above  the  Eagles.    On  his  accession, 

m  aged  woman  threw  herself  at  his  feet,  and  complained  that  a  general 
the  late  emperor  had  obtained  an  arbitrary  grant  of  her  patrimony, 
lis  general  was  Claudius  himself,  who  had  not  entirely  escaped  the  con- 
gion  of  the  times.  The  emperor  blushed  at  the  reproach,  but  deserved 
e  confidence  which  she  had  reposed  in  his  equity.  The  confession  of 
s  fault  was  accompanied  with  immediate  and  ample  restitution." 

nd  at  the  very  same  instant,  we  find  in  the  prayer  of 
le  people  for  the  punishment  of  Gallienus  after  death, 
terram  matrem  deosque  inferos  precaretur  sedes  impias  uti 
rallieno  darent,"^  the  beginning  of  the  deeper  sense  of 
iexpiable  guilt  which  culminates  in  the  days  of  Dante. 

*  Reigned  from  March  268  to  March  270  :  Gibbon  [ch.  xi.],  ii.  8  et  seq. 


^  [Julius  C(Bsar,  Act  iii.  sc.  1.] 

^  [Quoted  by  Milman  in  a  note  on  Gibbon,  ch.  xi.  vol.  ii.  p.  7.] 


216 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


But  the  reflection  of  this  first  act  of  Claudius,  in  th( 
justice  of  Trajan  to  the  widow,  was  accepted  both  b]] 
Dante  ^  and  the  Senate  of  Venice,  as  the  type  of  endurinf 
Roman  virtue ;  though  in  the  sermon-sculpture  of  the  Duca 
Palace,^  all  is  taught  by  the  memory  of  the  good;  anc 
there  is  no  word  of  the  death  of  the  wicked. 

15.  Claudius  died  in  his  native  district  of  Sirmium, 
(where  also  the  father  of  Aurelian  was  a  peasant  leaseholde] 
of  a  small  farm) :  Gothic  Claudius,  he  is  called,  according 
to  historians,*  for  his  Gothic  victories, — but,  remember,  he  i 
also  of  Gothic  race,  and  to  us  in  England  of  most  enduring 
interest,  because  his  grand-nephew,  Constantius,  invading  u; 
from  Boulogne,  ends  the  last  effort  of  Britain  for  her  islam 
independence,  and  founds,  at  York,  the  undivided  empin 
of  Constantine  over  the  Western  and  Eastern  world. 

16.  He  founds  it  in  his  gentleness.  While  yet  the  vice 
gerent  of  Diocletian,  **his  mild  and  humane  temper  wai 
averse  from  the  oppression  of  any  part  of  his  subjects 
The  principal  offices  of  his  palace  were  filled  by  Christians 
he  loved  their  persons,  esteemed  their  fidelity,  and  enter 
tained  not  any  dislike  to  their  religious  principles."*  T 
was  not,  indeed,  in  his  power  openly  to  reject  the  edict; 
of  Diocletian,  or  to  disobey  the  commands  of  Maximian 
His  authority  contributed,  however,  to  alleviate  the  suffer 
ings  which  he  pitied  and  abhorred: — 

"  He  consented  with  reluctance  to  the  ruin  of  the  churches ;  but  Ik 
ventured  to  protect  the  Christians  themselves  from  the  fury  of  the  populace 
and  from  the  rigour  of  the  laws.  The  provinces  of  Gaul  were  indebtec 
for  the  singular  tranquillity  which  they  enjoyed  to  the  gentle  interposi 
tion  of  their  sovereign.  The  elevation  of  Constantius  to  the  supreme  anc 
independent  dignity  of  Augustus,  gave  a  free  scope  to  the  exercise  of  hi^ 
virtues,  and  the  shortness  of  his  reign  did  not  prevent  him  from  establish 
ing  a  system  of  toleration,  of  which  he  left  the  precept  and  the  exampk 

*  Gibbon  [ch.  xvi.],  ii.  481  et  seq. 

1  [See  Purgatorio^  x.  73  seq.,  and  Faradiso,  xx.  44-47,  106-117.]  i 

2  [On  one  of  the  capitals  :  see  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  ii.  (Vol.  X.  p.  889).] 

^  [On  the  importance  of  the  great  citv  of  Sirmium,  on  the  Save,  as  one  of  the 
outer  bulwarks  of  Italy,  see  Hodgkin's  Theodoric,  pp.  211-213.  The  ruins  of  the 
city  may  still  be  seen  about  eighty  miles  west  of  Belgrade.] 

*  [See  Gibbon,  ch.  x'. ;  vol.  ii.  p.  11.] 


L  CANDIDA  CASA 


217 


his  son  Constantine.  His  fortunate  son,  from  the  first  moment  of  his 
cession,  declaring  himself  the  protector  of  the  Church,  at  length  deserved 
e  appellation  of  the  first  emperor  who  publicly  professed  and  established 
e  Christian  religion."  ^ 

17.  Now,  (a.d.  306) — the  moment  we  hear  of  the  crown- 
g  of  Constantine,  we  all  of  us  rush  over  instantly  to 
aly,  and  the  Hellespont,  and  think  not  a  whit  more  of 
d  Britain  and  the  way  she  was  constructing  herself,  under 
le  new  dispensation.  From  806  to  the  Saxon  invasion,  449, 
lere  are,  however,  one  hundred  and  forty-three  years,  con- 
ming  the  religious  progress  of  which,  I  must  leave  the 
ader  to  gather  what  he  can  find  from  other  sources ; 
having  only  room  here  to  take  note  of  an  extremely 

;  omentous  practical  event  which  takes  place  in  them, — ^the 
unding,  namely,  of  the  British  Navy. 

18.  Which,  it  is  well  that  the  British  boy-reader  should 
!  made  clearly,  however  reluctantly,  aware,  that  we  owe 
itirely  to  the  French,  Dutch,  and  Germans;  and,  but  for 
em,  for  aught  we  know,  might  have  been  to  this  day 
3setting  ourselves  in  wicker  coracles ; — a  sorrowful  remnant 
'  which  ancestral  habit  is  visible  in  our  two  great  British 
<  stinctive  naval  performances — the  loss  of  the  Royal  Geor^ge, 
A  the  Captain,^    No  other  nation  is  recorded  in  history 

.  having  sunk  a  ship  of  the  line  while  it  was  being 
tinted  in  the  harbour,  or  sent  one  to  sea  which  would 
irn  bottom  upwards  in  the  first  squall  that  struck  it.^ 

*  The  subjoined  letter  from  Mr.  Robert  Leslie  may  be  depended  upon 
the  reader  in  its  corroboration  of  the  statements  in  the  text  which 
!ght  otherwise  be  laid  to  the  account  of  my  love  of  paradox :  ^ — 

"6  MoiRA  Place,  Southampton, 
"Shrove  Tuesday ^  1885. 

"Dear  Mr.  Ruskin, — I  am  afraid  you  much  overvalue  anything  I  can 
11  you  about  boats  at  any  time,  while  I  think  no  one  knows  much  about 
em  when  the  Celts  went  to  sea  in  skin  boats,  as  the  Esquimaux  do 
>w.  I  believe  the  Irish  fishermen  had  boats  of  this  sort  until  quite 
cently,  and  went  far  away  long-line  fishing  in  them. 

"There  may  have  been  coracles  and  coracles,  for  we  know  that  the 

^  [Gibbon,  ch.  xvi.  ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  481-482.] 

*  [For  other  references  to  the  loss  of  the  Captain,  see  below,  p.  508.] 

*  [See  Vol.  XXII.  p.  349,  and  the  note  there.] 


218 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


19.  The  beginners  of  all  our  rule  of  the  waves  in  every 
thing,  then,  wonderful  to  say,  are  the  French.     In  the] 
middle  of  the  third  century — 256 — Gaul  had  to  be  deliverec' 
from  the  Rhine-swimming  and  Maes-jumping  Franks,^  bj 

Madras  surf  boats  are  nothing  but  great  coracles.  And  again,  there  i? 
the  strange  fact,  that  so  late  as  the  time  of  Columbus,  the  North  Americai 
Indian  had  not  advanced  beyond  the  birch-bark  canoe  or  his  dug-out  ii 
naval  architecture.  The  English  fishermen  have  always  been  noted  beach 
men,  and  have  always  used  the  clench,  or  overlapping  plank,  rivetet 
together  for  their  boats.  (I  have  said  something  about  this  on  page  .3 
in  the  scrap-book.^)  The  Norway  people  also  seem  to  have  built  in  thi 
way  mostly.  1  have  myself  seen  a  fisherman  (professional)  in  a  coracl 
upon  the  Dee  in  Wales. 

''On  the  other  hand,  I  think  that  in  the  South  and  South-east  of  Eng 
land,  shipbuilding  was  carried  on  by  settlers  from  France  or  Denmark  fror 
very  early  times  indeed. 

"Round  here,  at  such  little  places  as  Bursledon,  Beaulieu,  Lymingtor 
etc ,  there  were  great  ships  built  for  the  navy  :  this  I  know  from  a  lis 
of  them  ffiven  in  Charnock's  Naval  Architecture.'^  ' 
I  believe  you  cannot  lay  too  much  stress  upon  the  fact  that  all  nav£ 
progress  came  to  us  first  from  France. 

"  I  don't  quite  like  the  name  of  the  poor  old  Royal  George,  couple 
with  that  ridiculous  arrangement  of  iron  and  air  cells,  the  Captain.  Yo 
will  find  in  my  book*  a  scrap  bearing  upon  this  subject,  written  i 
1883,  which  may  interest  you.  Still  you  are  right  in  the  main  (as  yo 
always  are),  about  the  Royal  George,  for  our  old  English  liners  were  a 
that  time  very  kettle-bottomed,  and  did  not  compare  well  with  the  Frcnc 
models  of  the  same  period." 

^  [See  Bible  of  Amiens,  ch.  ii.  ^5  (30  (above,  p.  70).] 

^  [This  must  have  been  a  book  of  AIS.  extracts,  drawings,  newspaper  cutting 
etc.,  from  which  material  Mr.  Leslie,  encouraged  by  Ruskin,  afterwards  compile 
the  book  mentioned  below.  The  "compared  sails"  spoken  of  in  Ruskin's  lettc 
are  given  in  the  early  chapters  of  the  book.] 

3  [See  vol.  iii.  pp.  258  seq.  of  John  Charnock's  History  of  Marine  Architecture,  1802 
*  [Old  Sea  Wings,  Ways  and  Words  in  the  days  of  Oak  and  Hemp — a  boo 
published  in  1890.  ^^The  Boyal  George,"  says  Mr.  Leslie,  launched  at  Woolwic 
in  1756,  as  we  all  know,  was  capsized  and  sunk  at  her  anchorage,  Spithead,  whi] 
heeled  over  to  repair  an  old  worn-out  sea-water  tap  in  her  bottom.  In  speakin 
of  the  fate  of  this  fine  old  ship,  it  is  always  said  that  it  was  due  to  a  sudde 
squall.  But  from  a  circumstantial  narrative  of  the  disaster  by  a  survivor,  publishe 
in  1834  in  the  Penny  Magazine,  it  seems  that  her  loss  was  really  owing  to  th 
obstinacy,  or  worse,  of  a  lieutenant  of  the  watch,"  etc.  (pp.  156,  157)-  In  tl^ 
Preface  Mr.  Leslie  gives  the  following  letter  from  Ruskin  : — 

^'December  1884. 

''My  dear  Leslie, — I  never  saw  anything  half  so  delightful  or  usefi 
as  these  compared  sails  so  easily  explained.  Do  set  yourself  at  this  wit 
all  your  mind  and  time  on  this  plan.  It  will  be  the  most  refreshing  thin 
to  me  to  take  it  up  with  you  I  could  possibly  have. 

"Ever  your  grateful 

"J.  Ruskin."] 


I.  CANDIDA  CASA 


219 


lat  Posthumus,  whom  Shakespeare,  contrary  to  his  wont, 
IS  made  an  incredible  Briton  of  in  Cymbeline  ;^  the  real 
osthumus  being  the  saviour  o£  Gaul,  not  England,  from 
le  spluttering  and  spray  of  the  Franks,  which  for  twelve 
;ars,  unchecked,  had  kept  the  whole  of  Gaul  in  hot  water, 
-splashed  over  even  into  Spain — and,  at  last,  "when  that 
:hausted  country  no  longer  supplied  a  variety  of  plunder," 
variety  of  entertainment,  to  the  Prankish  mind,  they 
iiized  on  some  vessels  in  the  ports  of  Spain  and  transported 
iemselves  over  into  Mauritania!  (G.  i.  437).^^  What 
icame  of  this  first  Frank  expedition  to  Algeria  one  does 
)t  hear ;  f  but  it  is  evermore  to  be  remembered  as  the 
ginning  of  the  grand  naval  thieving  expeditions  in  which 
ir  Gothic  sailors  were  bred,  consummating  themselves  in 
r  Francis  Drake,  and  his  Sunday  morning  arrival.  (Fors, 
etter  14.') 

20.  This  first  French  naval  excursion  was,  you  see,  ex- 
iisitely  and  typically  piratical;  for  they  stole  even  the 
ips  they  sailed  in!  But  the  next  nautical  adventure  is 
erman-Gothic,  and  prepared  with  every  appliance  of  native 
iilders'  art. 

Already,  even  in  the  tempestuous  northern  belt,  and 
ijider  the  feet  of  its  fiercest  soldiery,  had  grown  up,  like 
e  wood-sorrel  beneath  its  pines,  the  gradually  softened 
d  informed  classes  of  the  husbandman  and  craftsman. 

*  The  reader  will  have  no  occasion  to  refer  to  Gibbon — unless  he  like, 
or  suspect  me  of  unfair  quotation, — in  which  case  he  will  find  that  my 
merals  refer  to  volume  and  page  of  Milman's  edition  (Murray,  1838). 
hat  I  think  it  necessary  should  be  read,  I  shall  quote  in  full,  so  that  I 
ill  not  give  references  to  any  other  edition  than  that  I  use. 

f  From  Gibbon,  at  least,  who  leaves  them  stranded  in  Morocco,  and 
3ses  on  to  the  Suevi,  whom  he  makes  an  extremely  early  sprout  of 
xons — then  Semnones.  The  inextricable  notes  of  his  tenth  chapter  are, 
appose,  now  superseded,  or  I  would  have  cut  some  way  through  them. 


For  another  reference  to  Shakespeare's  Posthumus,  see  Vol.  XXV.  p.  418.] 
Chapter  x.] 

"Master  Francis  Drake,  setting  out  in  his  little  Paschal  Lamb  to  seek  his 
tune  on  the  Spanish  seas,  and  coming  home,  on  that  happy  Sunday  morning, 
the  unspeakable  delight  of  the  Cornish  congregation  ; "  the  reference  being  to 
Jassage  quoted  in  Letter  13  :  see  Vol.  XXVII.  pp.  238,  244.] 


220 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


The  class  concerned  with  tillage  is  of  comparatively  littk 
importance  among  Huns,  Teutons,  or  Goths :  but  thd 
craftsmen,  never  spoken  of  by  historians  any  more  than  th( 
peasantry,  must  very  early  have  been  of  great  and  gaining 
influence, — and  thus,  in  a.d.  269,  w^e  are  told  by  Gibbonj 
in  his  politely  alternative  and  safely  dubious  form  of  state 
ment,  that  *'The  various  nations  who  fought  under  th( 
Gothic  standard  constructed  on  the  banks  of  the  Dnieste; 
a  fleet  of  two  thousand,  or  even  of  six  thousand,  vessek,  irj 
order  to  transport  a  pretended  army  of  three  hundred  am 
twenty  thousand  barbarians"  (ii.  9,  10)/ 

The  student  is  expected,  within  the  limits  thus  suggested 
to  determine  for  himself  how  many  vessels  there  probabb 
were,  and  to  what  force  the  pretended  army  is  to  be  re 
duced,  (surely  the  odd  twenty  thousand  of  imaginary  troop 
might  have  been  thrown  out,  or  another  eighty  thousam 
thrown  in,  for  the  sake  of  round  numbers  ?)  Beyond  a  fev 
vague  hints  in  chap.  xxv.  Gibbon  does  not  tell  us  what  ; 
Gothic  ship  was  like,  or  how  many  of  the  crew  could  fight 
and  under  what  sort  of  compulsion  the  rest  rowed.^  Le 
us  get,  however,  at  what  stable,  however  few,  realities  o 
the  old  earth  and  sea  we  may  glean  out  of  the  alter 
natives  and  dubieties  thus  proposed  to  us. 

21.  In  the  first  place,  for  leaders,  and  types  in  characte 
of  "  various  nations  who  fought  under  the  Gothic  standard, 
we  need  not  hesitate  to  take  the  tribe  afterwards  calle( 
"  Saxons "  ;  for  there  is  no  rational  doubt  that  the  prim 
plotters  in  the  business  were  the  Cimbri  of  Tacitus, — ^th 
unconquerable  German  power, — potius  triumphata  quan 

^  [Chapter  xi.]  ^ 
["As  to  the  circumstances  under  which  the  rowers  rowed,  ahout  which  M; 
Ruskin  asks,  we  gather  that  they  were  free  men,  as  in  the  triremes  of  the  Peloponnesia 
war ;  not  slaves,  as  in  moderc  galleys.  Somewhat  later,  indeed,  but  in  ships  simih 
in  size  to  the  Nydam  boat,  for  every  rower  there  was  also  one  man  to  protect  hin 
and  one  more  to  do  the  fighting.  Among  a  race  of  athletes,  rowing  was  not  looke 
upon  as  servile.  Of  "gentle  shipmates"  and  "girls  they  left  behind  them,"  v 
have  plenty  of  legends  in  the  Sagas.  Their  arts,  by  now,  are  much  better  know 
than  they  were  a  generation  back  ;  and  what  is  known  fully  justifies  Mr.  Ruskin 
belief  that  they  muse  have  had  fine  craftsmen  and  decorators  among  them,  eve 
at  the  early  period  of  which  he  writes."  (Note  by  W.  G.  CoUingwood  in  Veron 
and  other  Lectures.)] 


1 

! 


I.  CANDIDA  CASA 


221 


^  cta,"  ^  which  held  the  root  of  the  Danish  Peninsula,  and 
1ok  its  enduring  name  afterwards  from  a  single  tribe  in 
1e  midst  of  it.  So  much  of  claim  in  these,  and  pride 
j  their  first  recorded  seafaring,  we  have,  as  in  our  veins 
(  Saxon  blood. 

22.  Next,  look  back  to  p.  91  of  The  Bible  of  Amiens 
jr  account  of  the  two  moat  rivers  of  Europe — Vistula  and 
Dniester.  These  Saxons,  you  will  then  perceive,  not  yet 
]  lowing  what  they  are  about,  will  circumnavigate  Europe 
]  oper  as  one  island.  The  exploring  Saxons  float  themselves 
1)  Vistula, — inquire  what  water-carriage  may  be,  among 
i  e  farther  hills  ;  and  hear  good  report  of  Dniester  flowing 
(  actly  counter  to  Vistula,  and  as  nearly  as  may  be  of  the 
;me  length.  In  weight  of  waters,  however,  and  knowable 
( pth  of  constant  channel,  the  Vistula  is  much  the  nobler 
5!;eam;  the  Dniester  is  for  most  of  its  course  shifty  and 
!  allow,  ending  in  mere  lagoon ;  so  that  the  tall  and  bony 
Imdreds  of  thousands  have  to  float  themselves  down  it 
i,  assuredly,  some  flat-bottomed  type  of  barge,  in  which, 
]  :vertheless,  they  fearlessly  betake  themselves  to  the  Black 
l;a,  coast  it  down  to  the  Bosphorus, — run  through  that, 
j.d  the  Dardanelles, — and  then  divide  themselves  for  dis- 
( very,  southward  and  westward,  of  what  may  be  curious 
(  profitable.  Part  of  them,  the  boldest,  down  the  ^gean 
i  Cyprus,  where  one  does  not  hear  what  happens  to  them ; 
i  e  greater  part  more  cautious,  by  coast  of  Thrace  to 
.  thos,  where  they  take  to  land  again,  and  straggle  about, 
loublesome  to  the  good  people  of  Thrace  till  they  fall  in 
iith  the  Emperor  Claudius,  who  beats  them  home  over  the 
<  irpathians. 

23.  But  think  what  all  this,  on  the  least  conceivable 
!ale,  involves  necessarily  of  craftsmanship,  seamanship, 
•  ptainship,  clerkship  of  a  kind,  and  commissariat.  These 
lit-bottomed  floats  could  not  have  been  mere  logs  lashed 
i  gether  !  I  believe  our  own  Thames  barges  are  not  afraid 
<"  a  breeze  at  the  Nore,  but  the  Black  Sea  and  J^gean 

^  [Tacitus,  Germania,  37  :  Germani  .  .  .  triiinipliati  magis  quam  victi  sunt,] 


222 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


are  wilder-waved  than  the  brackish  tides  by  Sheppey  anc 
Rochester;  and  there  must  have  been  good  squaring  anc 
fitting  of  timber  in  that  coasting  fleet.  The  ship-  or  ever 
stout  boat-builder  is  one  of  the  highest  of  craftsmen.  Meta 
working  and  forging  must  have  been  on  no  inconsiderable 
scale  also;  sail-making,  and  cordage,  and  all  associated  spin 
nings  and  weavings.  Of  decoration,  and  inspiring  sounds— 
what  art  ?  no  one  tells  us, — some,  certainly,  pict  ^  or  em 
broidered,  blown  on  pipes  or  dubbed  upon  drums.  0 
Song,  or  kindly  mutual  cheer  and  Yo  Heave-oh,  whai 
topics — what  measures  ?  Camp  followers  or  camp  com 
panions,  or  gentle  shipmates,  any?  if  not,  in  what  tempe 
of  expectation,  what  comfort  of  household  circumstance 
the  girls  they  left  behind  them  ?  It  is  all  less  and  les 
conceivable  the  more  we  try  to  conceive — the  purple  anc 
black  sails  of  Odysseus, — of  Jason, — of  Theseus,  infinite!} 
clearer  on  the  horizon  than  these.  But  all  this  did  in  som< 
solid  manner  actually  happen,  with  many  consequences  fo 
us ;  though  what  record  there  is  of  it  in  any  credibL 
tradition  preserved  in  writing  might,  I  suppose,  be  put  ii 
small  compass  by  an  exact  scholar; — is  there  any  exac 
one  at  leisure  to  do  it  for  us,  ready  for  supplementar; 
and  revisional  notes  if  ever  we  get  to  the  end  of  ou 
text  ?  2 

24.  This  much,  or  little,  then, — date  no  matter,  facts  oi 
indeterminable  scale,  but  true  as  lightning,  and  ominous  o 
all  storm  to  come, — is  the  first  you  hear  of  the  Northmen 

1  [This  use  of  pict  (for  the  old  English  picted)  in  the  sense  of  painted  seem 
peculiar  to  this  one  passage  of  Ruskin.  For  the  word  pictus  as  connected  wit 
piece,  see  Vol.  XXV.  p.  153.] 

2  ["In  speaking  of  the  origin  of  the  navy  the  Author  inquires  for  informatio: 
about  barbarian  shipping  in  the  third  century  a.d.  A  better  answer  than  any  literar 
records  will  be  found  in  archaeological  discoveries,  and  especially  in  the  Nydar 
boat,  which  is  exactly  one  of  the  Saxon  ships  in  question.  As  it  is  fully  describe' 
and  illustrated  in  Du  Chaillu's  Viking  Age  (vol.  i.  pp.  219-284),  a  work  at  preseii 
generally  accessible,  there  is  no  need  to  enter  into  detail  here.  The  reader  migh 
also  look  at  engravings  of  ships  in  the  chapter  on  sculptured  stones,  vol.  ii.  pp.  116 
134  ;  and  the  bronze  models  of  boats,  vol.  i.  p.  105,— as  specimens  of  earlier  vessel 
The  later  shipping  is  fully  illustrated  in  vol.  ii.  pp.  136-234.  It  is  not  agrees 
how  much  use  was  made  of  sails  in  the  third  century  ;  but  in  the  Viking  Age,  vol. 
p.  107,  there  are  indications  of  sails  in  engravings  on  knives  of  the  bronze  period- 
much  earlier."    (Note  by  W.  G.  CoUingwood  in  Verona  and  other  Lectures.)] 


I.  CANDIDA  CASA 


223 


1 1  the  Greek  seas.  Eight  years  afterwards,  follow  again 
e  Franks. 

I  When  the  Emperor  Probus  delivered  Gaul  from  the 
ranks,  Burgundians,  and  black-painted  Lygii,  in  277,  he 
ts  a  price  on  the  heads  of  the  Lygii,  and  makes  the 
urgundians  buy  peace  with  the  surrender  of  spoil.  But 
ough  he  drives  the  Franks  "  back  into  their  morasses " 
r.  ii.  74^)  in  Holland,  he  feels  them  so  strong,  and  finds 
iem  so  trustworthy,  that  he  establishes  a  colony  of  them 
1  the  Black  Sea,  to  hold  for  Borne  against  the  Goths 
ijllani,  G.  ii.  82).    The  Franks  do  what  they  undertook  to 
ij);  but  finding  it  not  lively  work  enough  to  keep  the 
llani  in  check,  get  hold  of  some  (Gibbon  does  not  say 
lose,  but  I  suppose  E<oman)  war  ships  stationed  in  a 
axine  harbour,  and  set  off  on  an  independent  cruise. 

I  25.  I  now — with  the  always  necessary  queries — must  trust 
yself  to  Gibbonian  eloquence.    "They  resolved,  through 
iknown  seas,  to  explore  their  way  from  the  mouth  of 
le  Phasis  to  that  of  the  Bhine.     They  easily  escaped" 
rom  whose  pursuit?)  "through  the  Bosphorus  and  Helles- 
)nt,  and,  cruising  along  the  Mediterranean,  indulged  their 
i)petite  for  revenge"  (but  who  had  offended  them  then?) 
iind  plunder"  (but  maintaining  always  of  course  the  honour- 
ijile  name  of  Freemen),  "  by  frequent  descents  on  the  un- 
!  specting  shores  of  Asia,  Greece,  and  Africa.    The  opulent 
ty  of  Syracuse,  in  whose  port  the  navies  of  Athens  and 
arthage  had  formerly  been  sunk,  was  sacked  by  a  hand- 

II  of  barbarians  who  massacred  the  greatest  part  of  the 
ambling  inhabitants."^  This  is  a  sublime  antithesis;  but  if, 
I  stead  of  the  highly  imaginative  epithet  "trembling,"  the 
Istorian  had  only  told  us  how  many  of  these  unwarlike 
habitants  there  were,  or  what  he  means  by  a  "handful" 
■  Franks,  he  would  have  deserved  more  thanks,  if  less 

*  The  three  memorable  dates  are,  256,  Franks  in  Morocco;  269, 
□rthmen  at  Cyprus;  277,  Franks  from  Phasis  to  Rhine. 


^  [Chapter  xii.] 

2  [Ch.  xii. ;  vol.  ii.  p.  82.] 


224  VALLE  CRUCIS  , 

admiration.  *'From  the  island  of  Sicily,  the  Franks  pro- 
ceeded to  the  columns  of  Hercules,  trusted  themselves 
to  the  ocean,  coasted  round  Spain  and  Gaul,  and  steer- 
ing their  triumphant  course  through  the  British  Channel" 
(Britannia  at  present  nowhere,  you  observe),  "at  length 
finished  their  surprising  voyage  by  landing  in  safety  on  the 
Batavian  or  Frisian  shores/'^ 

26.  In  plain  English,  I  suppose  the  facts  were  that  the 
Black  Sea  colony  grew  tired  of  fighting  for  Probus,  and, 
fearing  that  they  could  not  make  their  way  by  land,  seized 
some  Roman  ships  and  robbed  their  living  round  by  sea,— 
a  splendid  piece  of  early  seamanship,^  and  more  necessary 
piracy  and  massacre  than  our  own  descents  or  ascents 
against  CafFres  and  Afghans,^  for  their  poor  properties  tc 
help  out  our  wretchedness  in  London.  But  at  all  events 
this  is  the  beginning  both  of  the  French  and  British  Navies 
For,  once  knowing  their  way,  the  Rhenish  Franks  begar 
to  make  a  regular  business  of  naval  excursions  through  th( 
straits  of  Dover  and  along  the  coast  of  France  for  whatevej 
they  could  pick  up.  To  check  these  piracies,  the  emperoi 
(Probus  ?  t)  established  a  Roman  fieet  in  the  straits,  having 
its  harbour  at  Boulogne,  and  commanded  by  an  admira 
from  the  Low  Countries — Carausius, — who,  being  a  man  o 
strong  sense  and  courage,  gradually  becomes  the  felt  anc 
acknowledged  Master  as  well  as  admiral  of  the  Romai 

*  Of  this  expedition,  Mr.  Sharon  Turner  observes,  with  the  tranqui 
wisdom  pecuUar  to  the  modern  British  historian,  that  "its  novelty  am 
improbability  secured  its  success"  (i.,  p.  142).^ 

t  Gibbon  does  not  give  the  name,  but  the  revolt  of  Carausius  bein; 
in  287,  it  is  not  too  much  to  allow  at  the  least  five  years  for  th 
previous  consolidation  of  his  force,  and  the  accumulation  of  wealth  whici 
caused  Maximian  to  give  orders  for  his  death,  and  so  compel  him  t 
rebellion,  or  at  least,  assertion  of  independent  power,  afterwards  ratifie* 
by  Diocletian.  Now  Probus  was  assassinated  in  282,  so  that  we  ca 
scarcely  be  wrong  in  attributing  to  him  the  appointment  of  Carausiuj 
and  the  consequent  establishing  of   Boulogne  as   the  chief  Gallic  navs 

1  [Ch.  xii. ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  82-83.]  i 

2  [For  other  references  in  the  same  sense  to  Native  wars  in  South  Africa,  se 
Vol.  XI.  p.  201,  Vol.  XVII.  p.  219  n.,  Vol.  XXV.  p.  180,  and  Vol.  XXVII.  p.  12 ;  t 
Afghan  wars,  Vol.  XXV.  p.  452,  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  889,  and  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  §  58 

^  [Sharon  Turner,  History  of  England,  vol.  i.  (Anglo-Saxons).] 


I 

I.  CANDIDA  CASA  225 

et — enriches  his  sailors  with  the  confiscated  spoils  of  the 
-ate  Franks ;  then,  feeling  himself  strong  enough,  lands 
Dover,  wins  over  the  Roman  Legions  in  England,  and 
aclaims  himself  the  Roman  Emperor  of  England.^ 

27.  This  beginning  of  our  worldly  prosperity,  at  sea, 
en,  is  owing  to  the  Franks ;  not  to  Rome  at  all.  But 

;  r  Christianity  and  our  civic  prosperity  from  306  to  409 
i  altogether  owing  to  Rome,  and  under  the  authority  of 

!  )me;  only  reflecting  back  to  her  our  own  fresh  spirit- 

wer. 

Think  of  it !  Constantine  was  crowned  at  York  in 
:6.  His  mother,  an  innkeeper's  daughter  by  the  shore  of 
I  sUespont :  ^  his  father,  a  Dacian  mountaineer :  he  himself 
irn  in  the  very  midst  of  Northern  Macedon — the  race  of 
3  Danube  and  the  Scamander  mixed, — the  "come  over 
j:o  Macedonia  and  help  us  "  ^  brought  now  over  into  Britain 
jieed;  and,  from  this  piece  of  British  plain,  carried  back 
I  Byzantium. 

28.  Then,  note  that  during  these  143  years  of  foUow- 
^  State  Christianity  in  Britain,  the  whole  work  of  St. 
irome  is  done  at  Rome  and  Bethlehem.  He  was  a  youth 
i  Julian's  death  in  363,  and  died  at  Bethlehem,  30th  Sep- 

nber,  420.    Antony  in  Egypt  is  305-370;  Ulphilas  in 
[joesia,  360.     So  that  you  have  these  years  of  Britain's 
Christian  pride, — briefly,  the  fourth  century  and  one- 
tird  of  the  fifth, — founding  monastic  life  all  through  the 

list,  and  fixing,  for  West  and  East  alike,  the  Canon  of 

I 

:jtion  in  the  north, — Bononia  Oceanensis,  "  Bologna  of  the  Sea/'  as  dis- 
tjguished  from  the  Bologna  of  Italy,  is  its  proper  name. 
I  I  see,  however,  that  the  Emperor  Claudius  is  spoken  of  as  having 
=|ied  for  Britain  from  it.  It  was  first  fortified  by  Pedius,  Julius  Caesar's 
undnephew  and  legate  in  Gaul;  who  is  said  to  have  been  born  at 
llogna,  and  to  have  planned  some  resemblance  in  the  upper  walled 
tvn  to  his  own  native  one.  Caligula  built  its  first  lighthouse,  which  was 
iil  standing  in  the  seventeenth  century  (^Histoire  des  Villes  de  France^). 


^  [See  for  §  26,  Gibbon,  ch.  xiii. ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  120-123.] 
'  [Gibbon,  ch.  xiv. ;  vol.  ii.  p.  186.] 
3  [Acts  xvi.  9.] 

*  [A.  Guilbert,  Histoire  des  Villes  de  France,  1845,  vol.  ii.  p.  98.] 
XXXIII.  p 


226 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


the  Bible.  And  all  this,  before  a  Saxon  syllable  is  hear< 
in  British  air. 

[Here  Raskin's  completed  MS.  ends.  The  following  pages  are  Mr.  Colling 
wood's  reconstruction  (in  Verona  and  other  Lectures)  of  the  remaindt 
of  the  chapter  : — ] 

The  missing  pages — leading  up  the  story  to  the  point  at  which  th 
Author  meant  to  break  off,  in  order  to  recommence,  in  his  next  ehapte 
with  the  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Church — can  be  partly  reconstructe 
from  the  Author's  rough  notes,  from  which  it  seems  that,  after  showin 
at  some  length  how  much  we  in  this  island  owe  to  foreign  influence — on 
navy,  for  example,  to  the  Franks,  and  our  Church  to  Rome,  in  the  firs 
instance, — he  was  going  to  recur  to  the  Pelagian  heresy,^  as  not  only 
proof  of  island  vigour  and  characteristic  independence,  but  also  as  th 
occasion  for  the  sending  by  Pope  Celestine  of  Palladius,  as  first  bisho 
of  the  Scots  of  Ireland  and  the  Hebrides.  This  at  once  localises  th 
story  in  the  north-west,  and  forms  a  link  between  Scottish  Christianity  an 
Rome,  in  spite  of  the  disclaimer  of  those  who  would  like  to  believe  in  a 
original  British  Church,  anti-Roman  from  the  beginning. 

The  next  topic  was  to  have  been  the  mission  of  St.  Germain  < 
Auxerre  and  St.  Loup  of  Troyes,  another  link  between  our  country  an 
Roman  Gaul — "St.  Loup,  a  scholar  of  the  great  college  of  Lerins,  who  fc 
the  fifty  years  of  his  pontificate  at  Troyes  was  recognized  through  France  s 
the  most  polished  of  scholars,  and  earnestly  kind  of  prelates,  'the  Fathe 
of  Fathers,  the  Bishop  of  Bishops,  the  prince  of  the  prelates  of  Gaul,  th 
rule  of  manners,  the  pillar  of  Truth,  the  friend  of  God.' "  ^  Their  legem 
and  the  story  of  the  Alleluia  victory,  which  the  Author  has  noted  fc 
description,  can  be  read  in  Bede  (book  i.  chapters  17-20).  The  Authc 
meant  to  return,  in  conclusion,  to  the  end  of  the  fourth  century,  and  t 
St.  Ninian,  "a  most  reverend  bishop  and  holy  man  of  the  British  nation, 
«ays  Bede  (book  iii.  chap.  4),  "  who  had  been  regularly  instructed  '< 
Rome  in  the  faith  and  mysteries  of  the  truth ;  whose  episcopal  see,  name 
after  St.  Martin,  the  bishop" — whom  he  had  visited  and  corresponded  wit 
— "and  famous  for  a  stately  church,  wherein  he  and  many  other  saints  re; 
in  the  body,  is  still  in  existence  among  the  English  nation.  The  place  b( 
longs  to  the  province  of  the  Bernicians,  and  is  generally  called  The  Whi 
House,  because  there  he  built  a  church  of  stone,  which  is  not  usual  amon 
the  Britons." 

With  which  assemblage  of  pregnant  associations — linking  together  Niniai 
our  north-country  patron  of  churches  and  holy-wells,  with  far-away  Rome 
and  the  Roman  pilgrim  with  Wandering  Willie's  country-side  by  Solwa 
shore;  and  wild  Galloway  in  the  dark  ages  with  wonderful  St.  Martin  c 
Tours ;  and  the  familiar  ruins  of  Whithorn  with  the  first  glimmer,  in  Gau 
and  Britain,  and  the  islands  seen  through  the  sea-fog,  of  all  the  Lamf 
of  Architecture : — with  this  bouquet,  so  to  speak,  of  poetical  ideas,  thi 
gathered  together,  the  story  was  to  pause  at  Candida  Casa. 

^  [See  above,  §  8  ;  p.  210.] 

^  [Sidonius  Apollinaris,  quoted  by  Montalembert,  Monks  of  the  West,  vol. 
p.  471  ;  for  the  mission  of  St.  Loup  to  Great  Britain  (a.d.  429),  see  ibid.,  vol.  iii.  p.  li 
The  sentence  in  inverted  commas  is  here  added  from  Ruskin's  notes.] 


II 


ENDING  THE  SIEVE;  OR,  CISTERCIAN  ARCHITECTURE 

{Read,  as  a  lecture,  at  the  London  Institution,  December  4,  1882)^ 

Among  the  circumstances  of  my  early  life  which  I  count 
)st  helpful,  and  for  which  I  look  back  with  more  than 
al  gratitude  to  my  father's  care,  was  his  fixed  habit  of 
pping  with  me,  on  his  business  journeys,  patiently  at 
Y  country  inn  that  was  near  a  castle,  or  an  abbey,  until 
bad  seen  all  the  pictures  in  the  castle,  and  explored,  as 

always  found  me  willing  enough  to  do,  all  the  nooks  of 
J  cloister.^  In  these  more  romantic  expeditions,  aided  and 
pired  by  Scott,  and  never  weary  of  re-reading  the  stories 

The  Monastery,  The  Abbot,  and  The  Antiquary,  I  took 

^  [In  the  abstract  of  this  lecture  in  The  Art  Journal,  the  following  introductory 

arks  are  reported  : — 

^'  In  answer  to  a  very  warm  welcome,  he  addressed  a  few  words  to  his 
audience_,  assuring  them  of  his  pleasure  in  being  back  amongst  them, 
and  expressing  his  sorrow  that  his  health  did  not  permit  him  to  appear 
there  more  frequently.  He  had,  he  said,  to  apologise  to  them,  first  for 
not  saying  more  on  that  matter,  and  secondly,  for  the  change,  already 
announced,  in  the  title  of  his  lecture.  As  to  the  first,  he  had  meant  to 
deliver  an  extempore  speech  to  them,  and  had  spent  half  the  morning 
writing  it ;  but  he  found  it  wouldn't  be  learnt  by  heart,  and  so — well,  it 
must  be  forgiven  him.  Then  as  to  the  change  of  title  :  the  lecture  was 
to  have  been  on  '  Crystallography,'  and  now  it  was  to  be  on  '  Cistercian 
Architecture.'  He  had  changed  the  title,  and  would  have  apologised 
more,  only  a  certain  newspaper  had  had  a  consolatory  paragraph  on  the 
subject,  in  which  it  had  said  that  all  his  titles  were  equally  good  for  all 
his  lectures  ;  nobody  could  tell  from  any  of  them  what  was  coming,  and 
so  one  did  as  well  as  another.  There  was  some  truth,  too,  in  it  after 
all,  for  the  '  Crystallography '  lecture  would  have  said  a  good  deal  about 
'Cistercian  Architecture,'  and  as  for  the  present  lecture,  he  had  found 
great  difficulty,  and  really  had  to  exercise  no  little  self-denial,  to  keep 
it  off  '  Crystallography.'  Not  that  there  was  much  in  it  about  '  Cistercian 
Architecture^  either.  Those  who  knew  his  writings  would  know  that  to 
him  the  'stones  of  Citeaux'  would  be  interesting  only  as  they  expressed 
the  minds  and  souls  of  their  builders,  and  so  it  ought  not  to  surprise  some 
of  his  hearers  to  find  a  lecture  by  him  on  '  Cistercian  Architecture  '  dealing 
mainly  with  the  Cistercians  themselves."] 

*  [Compare  PrcBterita,  i.  §§  5,  6.] 

227 


228 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


an  interest  more  deep  than  that  of  an  ordinary  child;  and 
received  impressions  which  guided  and  solemnized  the  wholci 
subsequent  tenor  of  my  life.  I 
2.  One  error  there  was,  and  one  only,  in  the  feeling 
with  which  these  scenes  were  interpreted  to  me.  For  though 
I  was  bred  in  the  strictest  principles  of  Calvinism,  my* 
father  and  mother  were  both  too  well-informed  to  look 
without  reverence  on  the  vestiges  of  early  Catholic  religion 
in  Britain:  nor  did  they  ever  speak  of  it  in  dishonourable 
terms,  or  cast  doubt  on  the  sincerity  of  the  faith  which 
had  founded  our  fairest  cathedrals,  and  consecrated  our 
bravest  kings.  But,  in  common  with  most  English  people 
of  their  day,  they  were  suspicious  of  the  Monastic  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Clerical  power ;  and  it  was  an  inevitable 
consequence,  that,  as  we  descended  from  the  hillsides  of 
Yorkshire,  or  the  Lothians,  into  the  sweet  meadows  beside 
their  pebbly  streams,  and  saw  the  cattle  resting  in  the 
shadows  of  Jedburgh  or  Bolton,  it  should  have  been  pointed 
out  to  me,  not  without  a  smile,  how  careful  the  monks  had 
been  to  secure  the  richest  lands  of  the  district  for  their 
possession,  and  the  sweetest  recesses  of  the  vale  for  then 
shelter. 

8.  Nor  was  Scott  himself  without  some  share  in  the 
blame  of  this  gravely  harmful  misrepresentation.  I  cannot 
but  regard  with  continually  increasing  surprise,  the  offence 
which  was  taken  by  the  more  zealous  members  of  the 
Scottish  Church,  at  what  they  imagined  Scott's  partiality 
to  Catholicism.  The  fact  really  is  that  every  heroic,  grace-f| 
ful,  and  intelligent  virtue  is  attributed  by  him  at  everj^i 
period  of  the  Reformation  to  the  sincere  disciples  of  Presby- 
terian doctrine,  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  has  beer 
content  to  portray  the  Catholic  faith  only  in  its  corruptior 
or  its  depression.^    Finding  material  enough,  and  that  oi 

^  [The  MS.  has  the  following  further  passage  : —  | 
.  ,  its  depression,  or  its  weakness,  and  in  the  characters  of  Abbotij 
Ingilram  and  Boniface  in  The  Monastery,  of  Lord  Glenallan's  mother  anc 
of  his  confessor  in  The  Antiquary,  of  the  Abbess  of  St.  Hilda  and  bci 
assessors  in  Marmion,  and  of  the  whole  body  of  the  Knights  Templars  ii 


II.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE 


229 


e  most  tractable  kind,  in  the  picturesque  and  pathetic 
►positions  of  the  Cameronian  and  Cavaher,  the  Puritan 
id  CathoUc,  the  mountaineer  and  dalesman,  he  gave  in 
e.  stories  of  Waverley,  Rob  Roy,  Old  Mortality,  Red- 
[untlet,  Nigel,  Peveril,  and  The  Abbot,  a  series  of  realiza- 
ms  which  are,  respecting  their  several  periods,  the  best 
storical  painting  yet  done  in  Europe.  But  the  libraries 
d  old  bookstalls  of  Edinburgh  seldom  threv^^  a  parchment 

his  way  which  would  give  him  clue  to  the  realities  of 
iman  life  before  the  fifteenth  century ;  his  conception  of 
ore  remote  periods,  coloured  by  the  partialities  of  his 
art,  and  discoloured  by  the  dulnesses  of  scholastic  history, 
vtlt  rather  on  the  military  than  the  missionary  functions 

British  Christianity.  The  crozier  and  the  cowl  become 
th  him  little  more  than  paraphernalia  of  the  theatre,  to 
iieve  in  richer  chiaroscuro  its  armour  and  plumage;  and 
e  final  outcome  and  effective  conclusion  of  all  his  moon- 
:ht  reveries  in  St.  Mary's  aisle,^  was  but,  for  himself  and 
r  his  reader,  that 

"The  Monks  of  Melrose  made  gude  kale 
On  Fridays,  when  they  fasted."  ^ 

am  going  to  ask  you  to  consider  with  me,  this  even- 
y,  whether,  admitting  such  to  be  the  fact,  the  monks  of 
veeddale  were  altogether  to  be  blamed,  or  ridiculed,  for 

Ivanhoe  and  The  Talisman,  he  gave  a  series  of  pictures  which  complied  with 
every  prejudice  of  his  countrymen,  and  were  discreditable  to  his  own  genius 
and  scholarship  not  only  by  the  vulgarity  of  their  colouring,  but  in  their 
unconsidered  violations  of  historical  accuracy. 

"Unconsidered^  observe,  I  say  with  emphasis  and  asseveration.  Scott 
is  never  malignant ;  never,  consciously,  a  partizan,  even  in  politics,  still 
less  in  religion.    But  he  is  liable  to  be  carried  too  far  by  the  imagination, 
to  which  he  assigned  no  graver  task  than  to  amuse  his  readers,  and  not 
to  carry  far  enough  the  antiquarian  research  which  he  followed  with  scarcely 
other  purpose  than  to  amuse  himself.    Wherein  not  caring  usually,  except 
for  the  sake  of  Wallace  or  Bruce,  to  pass  beyond  the  day  of  Elizabeth  and 
the  Queen  of  Scots,  and  finding  material  enough  ..." 
:  Boniface,  see  The  Monastery,  passim,  and  for  Ingilram  (his  predecessor),  chaps,  x. 
I  xxxvii.  ;  the  reference  to  Marmion  is  to  canto  ii.  ('^''^rhe  Convent").  For 
•tt's  treatment  of  Catholicism,  compare,  below,  p.  512.] 
^  [See  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  the  first  lines  of  canto  ii.] 
^  [See  Scott's  Ahhot  (ch.  xvi.)  :  quoted  also  in  The  Oxford  Museum,  Vol.  XVI, 
230.] 


230 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


the  excellence  of  their  broth, — whether,  on  the  contrary, 
the  making  of  good  broth  be  not  one  of  the  essential 
functions  of  a  good  monk, — and  even  whether,  but  for  the 
gray  brother's  intervention,  the  kale  pot  would  in  those 
times  have  boiled  as  merrily  at  Melrose,  even  for  other 
people.  , 

4.  You  cannot  but  feel  that  this  British  Isle  of  ours, 
after  all  its  orthodox  Reformations  and  cautious  constitu-^ 
tions,  presents  you  with  materials  for  this  inquiry  in  ex- 
treme sharpness  and  simplicity.    At  one  crook  of  the  gler, 
are  the  remains  of  the  Abbey,  with  its  half-fallen  toweij 
and  half-buried  cloister;   at  the  next  are  the  new  millsJ 
with  their  cloud-piercing  and  cloud- compelling  chimney,  anc 
their  quarter  of  a  mile  of  square  windows  in  dead  wall 
As  you  walk  back  to  the  village  inn,  you  meet  the  clergy 
man  inspecting  the  restoration  of  his  parish  church ;  in  the 
parlour  of  it  you  find  the  squire,  bent  on  the  introduction, 
of  agricultural  machinery,  which  will  send  the  congregatior 
to  America.    And  among  the  various  shades  of  benevolent 
avarice,  pious  egotism,  and  interest-bearing  charity,  in  whicUj 
the  enterprises  of  a  rational  age  must  be  undertaken,  w( 
shall  surely  be  able  to  discover,  if  human  nature  be  a: 
constant  as  it  is  alleged,  the  likeness,  in  some  sort,  or  eveii^ 
the  remnant,  of  ancient  enthusiasm,  and  discern,  in  th( 
better  movements  and  kindlier  impulses  of  our  own  hearts 
ground  for  believing  that  even  monastic  sentiment  was  no 
entirely  dishonest,  nor  monastic  adventure  entirely  selfish. 

5.  And  as  the  first  step  towards  a  true  estimate  o 
either,  we  must  address  ourselves  to  obtain  some  idea  o 
the  aspect  of  these  glens  of  ours  before  the  monks  settlec, 
in  them.  Those  now  daisy-sprinkled  or  deep-furrowed  field? 
were  not  laid  in  their  sweet  levels  by  the  mountain  streams 
and  the  land  which  we  conceive  to  have  attracted  th< 
covetousness  of  the  friars  lay  in  alternations  of  shingle  an( 
of  marsh,  under  shades  of  thorny  thicket  and  heath-bese 
rock/    The  sagacity  which  discerned  and  the  industry  whiclj 

^  [On  this  point,  compare  The  Schools  of  Florence,  §  25  (Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  203-4>;| 


11.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE 


231 


pdeemed  the  waste  alluvial  soil,  not  of  our  English  dells 
nly,  but  of  the  river-sides  throughout  Europe,  where  they 
-ere  pestilent  with  miasma,  desolate  by  flood,  and  dark  with 
3rest,  were  found  exclusively  among  the  societies  of  men 
^hom  we  might,  with  no  unapt  distinction,  call  the  Valley 
lonks,  wisely  and  calmly  devoted  to  all  the  arts  and  labours 
^hich  are  serviceable  to  mankind ;  skilful  especially  in  the 
rimary  ones  of  architecture  and  agriculture,  but  the  leaders 
Iso  in  the  literature  of  their  time,  and  its  tutors  in  the 
oundest  principles  of  temporal  policy. 

6.  These  Monks  of  the  Valley, — distinct  ahke  from  the 
larlier  mountain  Eremites,  and  from  all  contemporary  or 
jabsequent  brotherhoods,  who  led  lives  of  meditation  in- 
onsistent  with  practical  and  affectionate  duty, — will  be 
iscerned  by  the  final  justice  of  history  to  have  been 
bsolutely  the  purest,  and  probably  the  most  vital,  element 
f  Christian  civilization  during  a  period,  of  which  I  can 
earcely  venture  to  state  the  duration,  without  first  sketching 
1  simpler  terms  than  are  usually  allowed  by  its  chroniclers^ 
he  asras  of  rise  and  decline  in  our  old  ecclesiastical  polity.^ 

In  eighteen  years  from  next  Christmas  will  open  the 
wentieth  century  of  the  Christian  eera.  If  we  divide  by 
implest  arithmetic  these  two  thousand  years  into  four 
roups  of  five  hundred  each,  they  will  successively  present 
s  with  a  quite  distinct  series  of  phenomena,  more  intelli- 
jible  and  memorable,  by  far,  in  their  separate  than  in 
I  heir  consecutive  aspect. 

I  (I.)  In  the  first  five  hundred  years  you  have,  with  the 
all  of  the  Roman  empire,  the  extinction  of  ceremonial 

^  [The  MS.  here  contains  the  following  remarks,,  introductory  to  the  following 
•aragraph : — 

"Jt  M'ill  be  found  always  a  method  of  great  advantage  in  teaching 
history  to  young  people  to  give  them  clear  conceptions  of  the  great 
spaces  of  time,  rather  than  a  minute  memory  of  its  dates.  And  as  you 
fill  these  spaces  discriminately  for  them,  with  their  prolonged  and  influen- 
tial events,  you  will  find  the  aeras  become  coloured  under  your  hand  like 
the  districts  of  a  map,  or  the  zones  of  a  rainbow,  and  without  any  effort 
of  technical  memory,  but  merely  by  the  natural  sympathy  and  intelli- 
gence of  an  attentive  observer,  detach  themselves  one  from  another  in 
their  due  relief,  and  link  themselves  one  with  the  other  in  clear  succes- 
sions of  easily  remembered  melody."] 


232 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


Paganism  in  South  Europe,  the  estabhshment  of  the  tradi^j  i 
tions  of  the  mystic  saints,  chiefly  martyrs,  and  of  thej  f 
theories  and  practices  of  ascetic  monachism.  The  Vulgat^ 
translation  of  the  Bible  is  finished  at  Bethlehem  by  St 
Jerome,^  and  the  doctrinal  and  imaginative  machineries  of 
the  Catholic  Church  are  completed,  with  such  faults  and' 
virtues  as  we  may  each  of  us  see  good  to  ascribe  or  con- 
cede to  them. 

(II.)  In  the  second  five  hundred  years  the  proper  work 
of  the  Church  begins  upon  the  ruins  of  Paganism.  Her 
working  saints,  not  St.  Catherines,  nor  St.  Cecilias,  nor  St. 
Damians,  nor  St.  Christophers,  but  people  of  substantial 
presence  in  flesh  and  blood ; — people  who  by  no  means  ij 
appear  only  to  expire,  and  exist  thenceforward  as  pictures,  I 
stuck  full  of  hearts  and  arrows,  but  persons  as  busy,  as  ill 
obstinate,  and  as  inevitable  as  modern  engineers  and  rail-l  t 
way  contractors,  are  establishing  not  Christian  belief  merely i 
but  Christian  law,  in  every  Saxon,  French,  Latin,  and'  i\ 
Byzantine  town.  Their  disciple-kings,  Theodoric,  Alfred. 
Canute,  Charlemagne,  are  forming  and  consolidating  the  ii 
civil  dynasties  of  the  North ;  and  the  narrow,  but  not  j 
false,  Mohammedan  theology  is  similarly  tempering  to  its  i 
fiery  edge  the  scimitar  of  the  Saracen. 

(III.)  In  the  third  five  hundred  years  you  have  in  no 
small  degree  by  the  energy  of  the  Cistercian  order,  on  ( 
whom  our  attention  is  fixed  this  evening,  the  creation  of 
Gothic  architecture,  with  all  that  it  means ;  and  by  that 
of  the  Franciscans  and  Dominicans,  the  resuscitation  of  the 
art  of  painting,^  lost  since  Apelles,  with  all  that  it  means. 

You  have  perfect  laws  of  honest — I  lean  on  the  word,|j  i 
— honest — commerce  engraved  on  the  walls  of  the  churchesl 
by  which  its  activities  are  centralized  at  Florence  and  on  the 
Rialto.^    You  have  a  perfect  scheme  of  Christian  education 

1  [See  above,  p.  108 ;  Bible  of  Amiens,  ch.  iii.  §  36.]  ^ 
^  Compare  below,  p.  245.]  j 
'  [For  the  inscription  on  the  church  of  S.  Giacomo  di  Rialto,  see  Vol.  XXI. 

p.  2G9  (and  below,  p.  442  n.),  and  for  one  on  the  Badia  of  San  Domenico,  near 

Florence,  ibid.,  p.  266.] 


II.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE  233 


efined  for  you  also  on  the  walls  of  Florence.^  And  you 
ave  the  perfect  victory  of  civil  justice  in  Christian  King- 
ood,  when  the  king  and  the  barons  of  England  submitted 
leir  quarrel  to  the  arbitrement  of  St.  Louis.  ^ 

All  these  unquestionable  pieces  of  good  work  you  find 
)  have  been  done,  beyond  any  bettering,  in  these  great 
ve  hundred  years  of  the  Church's  life.  Towards  their 
ose,  it  corrupts  itself ;  in  their  close,  it  virtually  expires. 

(IV.)  And  then,  fourth  and  lastly,  in  these  presently  pro- 
ceding,  fast  concluding,  five  hundred  years,  you  have  print- 
|ig,  gunpowder,  and  steam  ;  Liberty,  Reason,  and  Science ; 
arliamentary  eloquence,  and  Parliamentary  Cloture,^  doing 
T  you  it  yet  remains  to  be  seen,  exactly,  what. 

7.  The  trenchant  separation  of  these  groups  of  years 
ould  commend  itself  to  you  still  more  frankly,  if  we 
I  ere  more  in  the  habit  of  connecting  the  history  of  art 
ith  that  of  religion ;  but,  while  historians  cannot  fail  to 
e  that  it  is  necessary  for  them  to  follow  with  some  atten- 
on  the  changes  in  links  of  armour  and  locks  of  helmets, 
ley  think  it  matter  of  no  serious  moment  whether  kings 
e  enthroned  under  round  arches  or  pointed,  and  whether 
dests  chant  beneath  carved  walls  or  coloured  windows, 
[y  own  mind  has  become  much  sobered  in  its  estimate 
"  such  things,  since  my  literary  efforts  began  with  The 
*oetry  of  Architecture ;  ^  but  the  pilgrimage  from  which  I 

^  [See  the  account  of  the  frescoes  in  the  Spanish  chapel  of  S.  Maria  Novella  in 
omings  in  Florence,  chaps,  iv.  and  v.  :  Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  379  seq.'\ 
2  [In  1263-1264,  wheu^  by  the  Mise  of  Amiens^  St.  Louis  set  aside  the  Provisions 
Oxford  ;  for  another  reference  to  this,  see  above,  p.  5.] 
'  3  [The  "  closure  "  of  debate,  adopted  from  the  cloture  in  the  French  Assembly, 
d  at  the  time  of  Ruskin's  lecture  (1882)  been  for  the  first  time  introduced  into 
e  House  of  Commons.] 

*  [See  Vol.  I.  The  MS.  of  the  lecture  as  delivered  has  here  an  additional 
ssage  (referring  to  the  original  title  of  the  lecture): — 

.  .  ,  Poetry  of  Architecture;  and  indeed  had  I  returned  from  Italy  in 
time  to  prepare  my  diagrams,  I  should  have  more  confidently  proposed  to 
you  to-night  some  of  the  prose  of  Crystallography.  Prose  is_,  indeed,  a 
somewhat  degrading  term  even  for  that  exact  science ;  for  no  Cistercian 
tracery  can  be  more  marvellous — no  Benedictine  law  more  beneficent — 
than  the  forms  and  methods  of  crystalline  architecture  by  which  the  moun- 
tains stand  in  their  majesty  and  the  veins  of  them  glow  with  their  gifts 
of  crystal  and  gold.    But  the  pilgrimage  .  .  ."] 


234 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


have  just  returned,  through  the  earher  Burgundian  churches,  j, 
to  tlie  birthplace  of  the  two  St.  Bernards,  of  the  Alp  and 
of  the  Vale,^  has  for  the  moment  thrown  me  back  into 
old  channels  of  affection,  wherein  I  trust  your  indulgence 
for  an  hour's  lingering  with  you. 

8.  Lingering,  however,  with  some  timidity, — first,  because 
I  imagine  many  here  must  know  most  of  what  I  have  to  I 
tell  at  least  as  well  as  I  do;  and  secondly,  because  it  must 
be  confessed  that  the  traditions  we  can  now  collect  respect- 
ing either  Bernards  or  Benedicts  are  of  a  nature  more 
calculated  to  amuse  young  people  than  to  edify  the  members' 
of  the  London  Institution.  Yet  it  cannot  but  be  remem- 
bered, in  our  dealing  with  them,  that  these  fairy  tales, 
though  in  their  first  aspect  a  good  deal  more  foolish  than 
any  that  are  acceptable  in  the  nursery,  have  at  the  root  ofi 
them  some  unquestionable  fact,  the  basis  of  things  real  and 
visible  around  us, — fact  of  which  we  can  only  hope  to  be  I 
made  intelligently  aware,  by  letting  it  announce  and  describe 
itself  first  in  its  own  way. 

Returning,  then,  to  my  divisions  of  five  hundred  years, 
and  it  being  of  course  understood  that  we  must  not  in  the.^ 
joints  of  such  massive  chronology  run  the  exact  dates  too 
fine,  T  will  ask  the  younger  part  of  my  audience  to  fix  in 
their  memories  the  two  precise  years  of  480  and  1480, 
giving  a  clear  thousand  years  in  the  interval,  for  the  limits 
of  our  second  and  third  religious  ^ras — beginning  the  second 
with  the  reign  of  Theodoric  and  closing  the  third  at  th^ 
birth  of  Raphael. 

9.  In  that  first  year,  480,  there  was  born  in  Rome, 
then  fallen  for  ever  from  her  war-throne,  but  more  luxurious 
and  wanton  in  her  disgrace  than  in  her  majesty — there  wasf- 
born  a  boy  of  a  senatorial  house,  who  was  brought  up 

^  [St.  Bernard,  archdeacon  of  Aosta  (died  1081),  born  at  the  chateau  of  Meuthoiii 
on  the  Lake  of  Annecy.  St.  Bernard,  of  Citeaux  and  Clairvaux  (1091-1153),  bora 
at  La  Fontaine,  near  Dijon  :  see  below,  §  25.  For  Buskin's  journey  in  the  summer] 
of  1882,  see  the  Introduction;  above,  pp.  xxxvi.,  xliii.] 

2  [Here  Ruskin  is  not  quite  accurate.  St.  Benedict  was  born  at  Nursia  in 
Umbria,  but  was  early  sent  to  Rome  to  be  educated.] 


II.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE 


235 


luring  his  childhood  amidst  all  the  pleasures,  and  shames, 
)f  the  most  godless  city  of  the  earth.  There  was  no 
theism,  says  Mr.  Froude,^  like  the  atheism  of  Home ;  and 

may  refer  you  to  the  pictures  of  Mr.  Alma  Tadema  for 
,  realization,  both  learned  and  vivid,  of  the  kind  of  life 
ler  atheism  ended  in.  Such  as  it  was,  this  strange  boy,  at 
fteen  years  old,  could  no  longer  endure  it ;  resolved  to 
)reak  with  it  and  have  done  with  it,  left  his  father's  house 
lone,  and  escaped  to  the  hills  beyond  the  Campagna. 
iVhat  search  was  made  for  him  by  his  parents  we  know 
lot.  One  person,  however — his  nurse — sought  for  him  in- 
iefatigably;  found  him,  was  allowed  to  stay  with  him  for 

while,  and  take  care  of  him.  And  I  could  very  earnestly 
nsh,  for  my  own  part,  that  both  Shakespeare  and  the 
British  public  had  been  less  lavish  of  their  emotions  about 
I  he  Veronese  legend  of  Juliet  and  her  nurse,  and  had  but 
icen  one  half  as  interested  in  conceiving  the  quiet  little 
iomestic  drama  of  St.  Benedict  and  Ms  nurse,  which  had 
ar  more  useful  consequences. 

I  10.  Many  a  library  shelf  have  I  sifted,  always  in  vain, 
io  find  out  w^ho  gave  him,  or  how  he  got,  his  name.  He 
jound  his  way  to  a  hermit,  who  taught  him  the  hope  of  a 
better  life  than  that  in  Rome ;  and,  I  suppose,  baptized 
|tim  in  such  hope,  and  blessed  him  in  the  search  for  it. 
thenceforth,  for  him  also,  the  verse  of  the  Virgin's  song 
)ecame  true,  "All  generations  shall  call  me  blessed."  Yet 
n  a  still  higher  sense,  not  merely  happy,  which  is  all  that 
he  Madonna  claims  to  be  called,  but  in  the  more  solemn 
DOwer  of  the  word  in  the  Benedictus  itself,  **  Blessed  be 

*  [The  abstract  of  the  spoken  lecture  in  The  Art  Journal  adds  : — 

.  .  .  the  most  godless  city  of  the  earth,"  justifying  in  her  pleasures 
I  and  in  her  shames  the  emphatic  utterance  of  Mr.  Froude  in  "  that  splendid 

address  of  his  on  Calvinism,  delivered  before  the  University  of  St.  Andrews, 
that  there  was  no  atheism  like  the  atheism  of  Rome" — a  state  of  mind 
illustrated  just  now  by  the  pictures  of  Mr.  Alma-Tadema,  which  were 
"fast  becoming  very  admirable  and  wonderful  pictures  of  very  detestable 
things." 

For  the  passage  in  Froude,  see  Short  Studies  on  Great  Subjects,  ed.  1891,  vol.  ii. 
j).  33.  For  other  references  to  Alma-Tadema's  pictures  of  Roman  life,  see  below, 
)p.  319-322.] 


236 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


the  Lord  God  of  Israel,  for  He  has  visited  and  redeemed 

His  people."'  ^ 

11.  You  will  not,  I  think,  find  the  working  saints,  of  I  ^' 
whom  this  one  is  the  Captain  of  the  Host,  lean  muchi  * 
upon  their  miracles;  and  I  suppose  no  modern  philosophy;  ' 
could  conceive  the  subsequent  effect  upon  human  imagi-j 
nation  of  the  belief  in  that  extremely  tiny  miracle  with  * 
which  St.  Benedict's  ministry  traditionally  begins :  mendingi  ' 
a  corn-sieve  which  his  nurse  had  broken,  only  because  she! 
was  so  vexed  about  it.  He  did  not  care  for  himself  to  ^ 
have  his  corn  sifted.  f 

Of  course,  I  could  not  offer  you  a  little  miracle  more 

easily,  if  you  wish  it,  explained  away;  and  that  withoutjj  ' 

having  the  least  recourse  to  the  vulgar  Gibbonian  theory  ^' 

of  pious  imposture.    The  Gibbonian  method  is  the  most  ' 

simple,  and  to  minds  of  a  certain  temper  the  most  satis- i  f 

factory :  you  explain  the  miracle  in  Cana,  for  instance,  byl  ' 

supposing  that  the  Madonna  had  arranged  with  the  servants'  ^' 

the  moment  for  exchanging  the  pots.    But  for  our  poori  ^' 

little  nursery  miracle  here,  we  need  accuse  no  one  of  anyl  ' 

guile;  and  merely  admitting  the  young  Benedict  to  have  * 
been  neat  with  his  fingers,  as  some  of  our  own  boys  are, 

though  their  virtue  does  not  always  show  itself  in  the*'  ^ 

mending  of  things,  we  can  fancy  his  nurse's  ecstasy  of  ' 
admiration  at  her  boy's  dexterity — "  e  un  miracolo " — and 
so  forth. 

12.  Make  what  you  will  of  it — break  what  you  will  of  ^ 
it,  the  absolute  fact  remains  fast,  that  in  all  the  choral|  * 
services  of  the  Church  this  legend  holds  the  first  place  in  J  ^ 
the  praise  of  St.  Benedict.  It  is  just  as  important  in  his\  ^ 
life  as  the  killing  of  the  Nemean  lion  is  in  the  life  of'  ^ 
Heracles.^  And  when  we  come  to  reflect  on  the  essential 
function  of  the  Benedictine,  I  do  not  think  there  will  | 
remain  any  difficulty  in  seeing  how  this  myth  became  the'  > 
popular  symbol  of  it. 

1  [Luke  i.  46,  68.] 

2  [For  the  importance  of  which,  see  Queen  of  the  Air,  §  53  (Vol.  XIX.  p.  363).] 


II.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE  237 


During  all  the  past  five  hundred  years,  Christians  had 
een  doing  very  little  else  than  getting  themselves  perse- 
ited  for  public  nuisances.  They  had  talked  a  great  deal,, 
laarrelled  a  great  deal,  suffered  much, — but  hitherto,  in 
ly  palpable  manner,  mended  nothing — hitherto  produced 
Dthing — hitherto  shown  the  way  to  nothing — that  anybody^ 
anted  to  find  a  way  to.  They  had  gone  mad,  in  great 
ambers, — had  lived  on  blackberries,  and  scratched  them- 
iives  virulently  with  the  thorns  of  them, — had  let  their 
air  and  nails  grow  too  long, — had  worn  unbecoming  old 
igs  and  mats, — had  been  often  very  dirty,  and  almost 
ways,  as  far  as  other  people  could  judge,  very  miserable. 

13.  St.  Benedict  examines  into  all  that;  tries  what  ad- 
intage  there  may  really  be  in  it.    Does  a  certain  quantity 

rolling  himself  in  nettles  and  the  like  ;  and  hears  with 
ispect  all  that  hermits  have  to  say  for  their  vocation, 
jinally,  however,  determines  that  Christian  men  ought  not 
|)  be  hermits,  but  actively  helpful  members  of  society: 
|iat  they  are  to  live  by  their  own  labour,  and  to  feed 
|cher  people  by  it  to  the  best  of  their  power.  He  is  the 
jDOstle,  first,  of  the  peasant's  agriculture,  and  secondly,  of 
ie  squire's  agricultural  machines — for  whatever  good  there 
in  them.  The  corn  and  the  corn-sieve  are  alike  sacred 
I  his  eyes.  And,  once  understanding  that,  and  considering 
hat  part  of  the  "library"  of  his  day,  the  Bible  of  St. 
erome's  giving,  would  either  touch  himself  most  closely, 
r  would  be  looked  to  by  others  as  most  descriptive  of  him, 
ou  will  feel  that  the  especially  agricultural  prophecy  of 
imos  would  become  the  guide  of  Benedictine  expectation, 
ad  you  may  even,  in  thinking  of  him,  find  a  weight  in 
le  words  of  it  yourselves,  unperceived  before : — - 

"For  lo,  I  will  command^  and  I  will  sift  the  house  of  Israel  among  all 
itions,  like  as  corn  is  sifted  in  a  sieve,  yet  shall  not  the  least  grain  fall 
pon  the  earth. 

"Behold,  the  days  come,  saith  the  Lord,  that  the  ploughman  shall 
i^ertake  the  reaper,  and  the  treader  of  grapes  him  that  soweth  seed,  and 
le  mountains  shall  drop  sweet  wine,  and  all  the  hills  shall  melt. 

"And  I  will  bring  again  the  captivity  of  my  people,  and  they  shall 


238 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


build  the  waste  cities  and  inhabit  them, — they  shall  also  make  gardens 
and  eat  the  fruit  of  them,  and  I  will  plant  them  upon  their  land,  and 
they  shall  no  more  be  plucked  up  out  of  their  land  which  I  have  given  i 
them,  saith  the  Lord  thy  God."  ^  j 

14.  This  is  the  efficient  practical  Benediction  with  which 
the  active  Saint  begins  the  second  asra  of  Christendom,  i 
But  he  had  also  a  doctrinal  message,  which  we  have  no  1 
time  this  evening  to  examine ;  yet  it  must  be  noted  as  of  i  > 
equal  moment  with  that  which  immediately  interests  us.  ' 
We  said  that  the  first  five  hundred  years  after  Christ  saw  S 
the  extinction  of  Paganism.    In  the  deeper  sense,  nothing!  \ 
that  once  enters  the  human  soul  is  afterwards  extinct  in  it. 
Every  great  symbol  and  oracle  of  Paganism  is  still  under-  i 
stood  in  the  Middle  Ages ;  and  I  have  just  been  drawing! 
from  the  twelfth -century  porch  of  Avallon  the  sculptures  of  I 
Herodias  and  her  daughter  on  the  one  side,  and  of  Nessus  a 
and   Deianira   on  the  other.^    But   as   a  formal  worship,!  ' 
Paganism  may  be  considered  as  significantly  closing  with!  | 
the  destruction,  by  St.  Benedict  and  his  disciples,  of  the  i 
temple  of  Apollo  on  Monte  Cassino.^    All  the  idolatry  ofj  J 
the  world,  in  the  sense  of  misdirected  faith,  was  recognized 
by  the  first  instincts  of  Christianity,  as  worship  of  Baal,— 
worship  of  the  sun  by  day,  of  the  moon  by  night,  as  the|  ^ 
vital  powers  of  nature  instead  of  God.    And  the  darkening 
of  the  sun  and  moon  on  each  side  of  the  Cross,  in  sym- 
bolical representations  of  the  Crucifixion,^  is  not,  I  beheve, 
meant  to  express  only  the  temporal  affliction  of  them,  but!  % 
the  passing  away  of  their   spiritual  power.    And  in  the 
Benedictine  sign  given  on  Monte  Cassino,  you  have  the 
true  beginning  of  those  ages,  dark,  as  they  have  so  long 
been  called,  in  which  the  Apolline  oracles  and  inspiration!  ■ 
pass  away ;  and  which  are  ended  by  the  resuscitation  of 

1  [Amos  ix.  9,  13-15.] 

2  [Ruskiii's  drawing  is  not  known  to  the  editors  ;  but  one  of  this  subject  bv 
AV.  G.  Collingwood  is  in  the  Ruskin  Museum  at  Sheffield :  see  Vol.  XXX.  p.  224.J 

2  [See  Milman's  History  of  Latin  Christianity ,  Book  iii.  ch.  vi.  (vol.  ii.  pp.  87-88, 
small  edition).] 

*  [Matthew  xxvii.  45.] 


II.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE 


239 


^aganism,  under  the  same  symbol,  as  I  pointed  out  now 
liaxij  and  many  a  year  ago/ — when  the  Dispute  of  the 
iacrament  and  the  Choir  of  Parnassus  were  painted  side  by 
ide  in  the  same  chamber  of  the  Vatican. 

15.  In  the  proclamation,  then,  of  useful  labour  as  mans 
uty  upon  earth,  and  of  the  Sun  of  Righteousness^  as  his 
^ord  in  Heaven,  you  have  the  Benedictine  gospel:  of 
/hich  the  most  sensible  and  impartial  of  French  historians 
/rites,  with  no  more  than  justice,  "  La  Regie  de  Saint 
^enoit  est  peut-etre  le  plus  grand  fait  historique  du  Moyen 
Lge."^ 

I  translate  to  the  best  of  my  power  the  noble  passage 
/hich  follows : — 

We  who  live  under  regular  governments,  and  in  legally  protected  society, 
ui  only  with  difficulty  conceive  the  disorder  which  followed  the  fall  of  the 
Oman  Empire  in  the  West.  Everywhere  ruin  and  distraction, — the  triumph 
r  brutal  force,  the  loss  of  all  respect  for  human  dignity,  the  cultivated 
nds  trampled  by  famished  multitudes,  the  cities  devastated,  entire  popu- 
tions  driven  out  or  massacred,  and  over  all  this  chaos  of  society  in  agony, 
ave  upon  wave  the  inundations  of  barbarians  as  tides  upon  the  sea-sand, 
he  monks  descending  from  Monte  Cassino  spread  themselves  througli  Ger- 
iiany  and  Gaul  even  to  the  northern  limits  of  Europe,  opening  out  the 
)rests,  directing  the  water  courses,  and  founding  monasteries  surrounded 
y  workshops,  which  became  centres,  to  the  peasantry,  of  moral  force  and 
rotected  industry ;  to  whom  the  new  apostles,  after  providing  for  their 
ifety  and  support,  taught  letters,  sciences,  and  arts ;  fortified  their  souls, 
ave  them  the  example  of  self-denial,  taught  them  to  love  and  to  protect 
le  weak,  to  succour  the  poor ;  to  expiate  faults,  and  to  exercise  them- 
ilves  in  virtue.  They  sowed  among  servile  and  degraded  races  the  first 
ieds  of  independence  and  liberty,  and  they  opened  to  them,  as  the  last 
isylum  against  distress  of  body  and  soul,  inviolable  and  sacred  houses  of 
Irayer." 

16.  This  passage,  you  will  observe,  includes,  in  the 
eneral  grasp  of  it,  the  entire  function  of  the  Benedictine 
rder,  with  that  of  all  its  later  branches.  For  our  own 
'urposes,  we  must  now  follow  out  the  more  distinctive 
haracters  of  these  in  relation  to  their  times. 

1  [See  Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting  (1854),   §§  125-127  (Vol.  XII. 
p.  148-150).] 

2  [Malachi  iv.  2:  see  Unto  this  Last,  §  44  (Vol.  XVII.  p.  59).] 
^  [Viollet-le-Duc,  Dictionnaire  de  V Architecture,  \om.  i.  p.  242.] 


240 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


You  will  recollect — I  again  address  my  younger  hearers^ 
— the  year  480,  of  St.  Benedict's  birth.    He  gives  his  rule 
about  505,  and,  in  the  time  between  its  promulgation  and, 
the  close  of  the  year  1000,  the  order  of  St.  Benedict  bads 
founded  15,070  abbeys  throughout  the  world  then  known.^ 

Abbeys — institutions,  that  is  to  say,  under  the  govern- 1 
menfc  of  an  Abbot — a  totally  different  person,  in  the  ideal 
of  him,  from  a  bishop.  Partly  a  farmer,  partly  a  school- 
master, partly  an  innkeeper.  Not,  essentially,  he,  concerned 
with  the  cure  of  souls,  but  with  the  comfort  of  bodies,  and 
the  instruction  of  brains.  Not  merely  given  to  hospitality,! 
apt  to  teach,^ — but  vowed  to  hospitality,  bound  to  teach. 

17.  Fifteen  thousand,  then,  you  have  of  these  Abbot 
Samsons,^  representing  the  schoolmaster  abroad  ^  and  at  home^j 
at  the  close  of  the  tenth  century.  A  power  independent 
of  the  Episcopal,  often  in  rivalry  with  it,  assuredly  in  front 
of  it,  in  all  progressive  movement,  and  in  its  own  centri- 
fugal energy  throwing  olF  bishops  and  cardinals — ay,  and 
popes  when  they  were  wanted,  like  fire  from  a  grindstone.! 
Seven  thousand  bishops  they  had  given  to  the  Church,  andj 
twenty-four  popes,  up  to  the  time  at  which  we  have  to 
study  their  division  into  the  two  branches  of  Cluny  and 
Citeaux. 

18.  I  call  those  orders,  you  observe,  branches — not  re- 
forms of  the  Benedictine.  In  an  old  thing  and  a  strong 
thing,  much  may  be  faultful,  much  decayed,  and  more 
unable  for  other  work  than  it  did  in  its  youth,  and  foil 
other  place  than  it  found  for  its  springing.  But  you  mighij 
as  well  call  the  branches  of  the  old  Hampton  Court  vine^ 
reforms  of  that,  as  Cluny  and  Citeaux  reforms  of  Montd 
Cassino.  More  various  office  was  asked  of  the  monks  nowJ 
What  we  call  "  civilization  "  was  beginning  to  fasten  societj| 
painfully  into  its  present  orders  of  the  rich  and  the  poor 

^  [See  above,  p.  234.] 

2   See  the  pnssage  quoted  in  the  Appendix  ;  below,  p.  250.] 
^  ["A  bishop  then  must  be  .  .  .  given  to  hospitality apt  to  teach"  (1  Timotln 
iii.  2).] 

*  [See  Carlyle's  Past  and  Present,  Book  ii.  chaps,  vi.  seq.] 

^  [The  phrase  was  Lord  Brougham's,  in  a  speech  on  January  29,  1828.] 


11.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE 


241 


Tactically,  Cluny  was  founded  for  the  Schooling  of  the 
ch,  and  Citeaux  for  the  Help  of  the  poor.  The  lands  of 
luny  were  given  it  by  a  Duke  of  Aquitaine,  its  walls 
lere  raised  by  the  Kings  of  France  and  England,  and  the 
'ea;test  prince  was  not  educated  with  more  care  in  the 
dace  of  kings  than  was  the  least  of  the  children  of  Cluny.  ^ 
ut  the  first  territory  of  Citeaux  was  a  desolate  marsh. 
,s  order  was  founded  by  a  poor  brother  of  the  Abbey  of 
[olesmes,  with  a  few  companions,  vowed  to  the  barest 
3verty  and  the  rudest  labour.  Passed  but  a  few  years, 
id  at  their  bidding,  and  in  their  monks'  dress,  you  might 
e  the  most  powerful  lords  drive  the  plough  beside  the 
)orest  peasant. 

19.  Now,  let  us  get  the  idea  of  the  main  stem  and 
ese  two  resilient  branches  well  into  our  minds.  How  the 
jce  was  laid  to  the  root  of  them,  or  how  the  wild  boar 
it  of  the  wood  devoured,^  you  will  find  many  a  scornful 
storian  glad  to  tell.  But  learn  first,  for  truth's  sake  and 
ve's,  what  the  living  stem  was,  and  the  use  of  God's  two 
-affcs  on  it. 

The  diagram  ^  may  stand  for  the  general  plan  of  a 
enedictine  abbey  of  any  place  or  time;  but  it  is,  actually, 
lat  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Gall,  given  by  VioUet-le-Duc  as 
all  probability  arranged  by  Abbot  Eginhardt,  Charle- 
\agne^s  own  master  of  works:  and  it  is  dravm  in  the 
iiginal  with  such  completeness  that  every  bed  in  the 
jtchen  garden  has  the  name  written  beside  it  of  the  parti- 
|ilar  "kale"  that  is  to  be  grown  there. 
1  The  design  of  the  church,  with  two  circular  apses,  one 


t  each  end,  is  of  singular  completeness  and  beauty,  but 
[duces  itself  afterwards  to  the  square  terminations  which 
e  constant  in  your  English  churches.    The  main  entrance 
at  the  west,  between  two  detached  chapels,  one  to  the 

^  [See  Appendix  on     The  Foundation  of  Cluny "  ;  below,  p.  253.] 

^  [See  Matthew  iii.  10 ;  Psalms  Ixxx.  13.] 
\  ^  [Plate  XXXII.  (see  next  page);  from  the  article  ''Architecture"  in  vol.  i. 
j  243  of  the  Dictionnaire  de  l' Architecture  Fran^aise.] 

XXXIII.  Q, 


242 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


Archangel  Michael,  the  other  to  Gabriel.  There  are  two 
smaller  lateral  entrances ;  one  for  the  guests  of  the  Abbey, 
the  other  for  its  farm  and  other  servants.  i 

20.  On  the  sides  of  the  east  chancel  you  have  on  the* 
right  the  monks'  entrance  and  the  sacristy,  marked  by  a 
cross; — on  the  left  the  Abbot's  entrance  and  the  library, i 
consisting  of  the  scribes'  room  below,  and  manuscript  room 
above.^  Then,  on  what  you  may  think  of  as  the  literaryj 
and  lay  side  of  the  nave,  the  north,  the  schools;  to  the! 
south  for  what  sun  could  be  had,  the  cloisters,  Betweeni 
the  schools  and  library,  the  Abbot's  house  and  servants'' 
offices,  summed  in  the  plan  as  the  abbot's  kitchen  (little  a). 
Next  to  the  schools,  H,  the  hospice  or  general  stranger  guest 
house,^  with  attached  offices  and  kitchen  (little  h).  ^ 

Next  to  the  cloisters,  P,  the  pilgrims'  house,  and  little^^ 
p,  the  pilgrims'  kitchen.  Round  the  cloisters,  D  the  dor- 
mitories, R  the  refectory,  little  c  the  cellars — everybody's, 
cellar,  mind  you,  as  well  as  the  monks',  though  of  course 
they  had  their  bins  in  it;  and  if  you  choose  to  read  big  C 
and  little  c  for  Creature  comforts — the  sunny  side  of  theij 
church  and  the  private  key  of  the  cellar,  that  was  certainly 
so.  Also  here,  you  observe,  that  the  kale  might  be  hot  as 
well  as  good,  is  the  special  refectory  kitchen.  Then  beyondji 
the  eastern  apse,  N,  the  house  of  the  novices,  I,  of  the  old 

^  [The  abstract  of  the  spoken  lecture  in  The  Art  Journal  adds  : — 

" .  .  .  Look  how  on  either  side  of  the  chancel  were^  on  the  right  the 
sacristy,  on  the  left  the  library,  the  furniture  of  the  altar  and  the  furniture 
of  the  school.  They  held  equal  places  near  the  chancel,  in  testimony  that'i 
both  were  equally  sacred  things,  and  that  education  was  holy  in  its  pur 
poses,  as  well  as  in  its  subjects,  in  those  days.  ^1  met,'  said  Mr.  Ruskin, 
though  not  in  these  very  words,  '  with  a  curious  commentary  on  this  when 
in  Paris  the  other  day.  I  wanted  to  look  at  something  in  the  life  ol 
St.  Bernard,  and  I  went  in  search  of  a  life  of  him  amongst  the  large  book- 
sellers north  of  the  Seine.  They  all  gave  me  one  answer,  there  wen 
no  religious  books  iiorth  of  the  Seine ;  novels  in  abundance,  yes,  but 
religious  books  north  of  the  Seine,  not  one ;  and  I  had  to  go  over  to  tbt 
Quartier  Latin,  amongst  the  poor  people  or  the  very  hard  students,  befoif 
I  could  get  my  life  of  St.  Bernard ;  1  couldn't  get  it,  or  anything  of  thai 
sort — north  of  the  Seine.' "]  i 
^  [See  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  93,  where  Ruskin,  referring  to  this  plan,  notes' 
that  "appointed  in  its  due  place  with  the  Church,  the  Scriptorium  and  the  school 
is  the  Hospitium  for  entertaining  strangers  unawares"  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  475).] 


XXXII 


+.  Sacristy  S.  Schools 

L.  Library  H.  Hospice 

A.  AblDots  House  la.  Hospice  Etclieii 

a .  iitiTaots  KitcKen 


C  .    Qoisters  D .  Dormitories 

P.    Pilgdm's House         R.  Refectory 

p .    Pilgrim's  ELtchea        c  .  Cellar 

K .  ELtchea 


N.  "Novices  House  W.  Workshops                    0.  Orciiard 

I .   Infirmary  M .  Mills                             G .  Garden 

mg-.  Medidne  Gar-den  GR.  Granaries                      g"-  Gardener's  House 

md.  Doctors  House  F .  Enait  House 

ph .  Pharmacy  y .  Potjltty  yard 


Plan  of  a  Cistercian  Abbey 


11.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE 


243 


id  infirm  monks,  who  could  work  no  more.  Young  and 
id,  each  with  their  own  httle  chapel:  we  may  perhaps 
3pe  that  the  old  monks'  chapel  was  warmed  for  winter 
latins.  Also  for  their  refreshment,  and  old  man's  work — 
imon  Lee's  weary  hand  on  the  mattock,^ — here  the  orchard, 
lere  the  garden,  but  the  gardener  himself  an  important 
3rsonage,  with  his  house  nearly  as  big  as  the  Abbot's, 
he  fruit-store  also  very  large.  Doesn't  it  all  remind  you 
ho  know  your  Scott  of  the  old  abbot-gardener  at  Loch 
even  ?  ^ 

21.  Opposite,  in  due  symmetry,  the  physician's  house, 
ith  its  separate  garden  of  medicinal  herbs,  and  his  store- 
i)use  for  them,  and  laboratory. 

Then  lastly,  but  occupying,  you  see,  the  space  on  one 
lie  of  the  cloisters,  corresponding  to  that  of  the  church 
a  the  other,  you  have  the  work-shops  and  farm-buildings. 
Workshops  I  have  called  them ;  properly  ateliers  only, — 
])  selling,  here,  all  giving.  You  know  well  enough  what 
l^came  of  the  Church  when  she  took  to  trading.  In  the 
]  eantime— whatever  were  the  Abbot's  faults  as  head  of  the 
j  m,  he  took  no  commission  on  his  workmen's  labour. 

Ateliers — of  every  useful  handicraft  known,  but  with  a 
arious  difference,  afterwards  establishing  itself,  between 
lose  of  Cluny  and  Citeaux.  At  Cluny  the  leading  work 
i  the  jeweller's — goldsmith's  and  jeweller's,  that  is  to  say 
-  and  what  sort  of  work  it  was  you  may  still  see  in  the 
iooch  which  clasped  the  mantle  of  St.  Louis. 

At  Citeaux  there  is  no  jewellery  going  on  any  more, 
ht  we  have  an  entire — I  was  going  to  say  Kochdale  ^— but 
]  ought  to  say — Clear-Dale  (Clairvaux)  co-operation  of  every 
ijOd-producing  and  pot-boiling  business,  organised  in  groups, 
(ch  with  their  own  master,  the  brother  millers,  brother 
ikers,  green-grocers,  carpenters,  masons,  smiths,  weavers; 

^  See  Wordsworth's  poem^  Simon  Lee,  stanza  10.] 
2  [See  The  Abbot,  ch.  xxviii.] 

^  [For  the  Rochdale  Pioneers"  (1844)^  see  Holyoake's  History  of  Co-operation, 
1'9,  vol.  ii.  ch.  iv.] 


244 


VALLE  CKUCIS 


and  at  the  head  of  the  collective  groups  belonging  to  each 
abbey  one  monk  charged  with  the  distribution  and  organi- 
zation of  all  the  work.  1 

22.  Now,  again,  young  people,  fix  this  distinction  between 
Cluny  and  Citeaux  well  in  your  minds.  Cluny  is  thei 
culmination  of  the  power  of  the  monastic  system,  the' 
universal  monastic  system  of  hill  and  plain,  of  town  and 
country,  of  sackcloth  and  cloth  of  gold.  It  is  Westminster 
Abbey  and  Bond  Street  in  one — but  missing  out,  I  am 
sorry  to  confess,  St.  George's,  Hanover  Square.  But  al) 
that  was  noblest,  kingliest,  brightest  in  the  active  world, 
looked  for  its  guidance  there.  Its  church  was  the  largest 
church  in  all  the  west ;  its  plan  was  given  by  St.  Petej 
in  a  dream. 

The  popes  had  successively  granted  to  its  abbots  forma 
bulls  of  exemption  from  the  episcopal  interference,  and  th^ 
abbots  could  menace  with  excommunication  any  bishoj 
who  trespassed  on  their  privileges.  In  the  time  of  St 
Hugo  of  Cluny,  the  abbey  with  its  dependencies  formed  J 
European  university,  with  the  power  of  a  kingdom.  H< 
was  called  to  regulate  the  religion  of  Spain  by  Alphons< 
of  Castille,  of  England  by  William  the  Conqueror,  an( 
struck  his  own  coinage  at  Cluny  as  the  King  of  Franc 
at  Paris. 

23.  Now  turn  we  to  Citeaux.  I  do  not  think  th 
readers  of  the  essays  on  architecture,  which  of  all  m; 
writings  have  had  the  most  direct  practical  influence,^  wi] 
think  their  hour  mis-spent  in  enabling  me  personally  t 
ask  their  pardon  for  the  narrowness  of  statements  int 
which  either  their  controversial  character,  or  the  specii 
direction  of  my  earlier  studies,  hurried  me.  Of  whic 
faults,  one  of  the  chief  lay  in  the  depreciation  of  eccles 
astical  influence,  and  the  strong  insistence  on  the  nationi 
styles  of  civil  building,^  into  which  my  dread  of  ritualie 

^  [Compare^  on  this  point,  the  Introductions  to  Seven  Lamps  (Vol.  VII 
pp.  xlii._,  xliii.)  and  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  ii.  (Vol.  X.  pp.  \.,  li.).] 

2  [See,  for  instance.  Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting,  Vol.  XII.  pp.  36-4; 
and  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  ii.  (Vol.  X.  pp.  119,.  120).] 


II.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE 


245 


evotion  in  the  first  place,  and  in  the  second  my  too 
knguine  hope  of  turning  the  streets  of  London  into  the 
keness  of  those  of  Nuremberg,  provoked,  or  tempted  me. 
t  is  indeed  perfectly  true,  and  I  have  nothing  to  retract 
'om  the  distinctness  of  the  assertion,  that  Gothic  archi- 
^cture  is  not,  in  the  total  spirit  of  it,  more  devotional 
lan  humane ;  that  all  the  beautiful  forms  of  it  will 
ondescend  to  the  simplest  domestic  comfort,  and  that  the 
ixurious  and  insensate  splendours  of  it  are  as  much  for- 
lidden  to  the  church  as  to  the  palace  and  the  council- 
jail.  But  also  it  is  true,  and  salient  among  the  noblest 
:uths  which  illustrate  the  nature  of  man,  that  as  the 
isionary  faith  of  the  Franciscans  purified  and  animated 
le  art  of  painting  from  its  Roman  pollution  and  its 
lyzantine  palsy,  so  the  modesty  and  valour  of  the  Cis- 
?rcians,  subdued   by  the  severe  lessons  of  St.  Bernard,^ 

^  [Compare  Vol.  XXIII.  p.  203.    In  the  spoken  lecture,  Ruskin  expanded  the 

)int  here  ;  the  abstract  in  The  Art  Journal  says : — 

^'  So  came  Citeaux  to  be  a  great  abbey,  of  which  now,  however,  nothing 
remains.  St.  Bernard  trenched  the  marshes,  and  then  he  dealt  with  the 
buildings.  He  extended  his  severe  lessons  to  Cistercian  Architecture, 
forbidding  in  its  decoration  the  use  of  anything  that  was  either  ludicrous 
or  cruel,  and  restricting  its  ornament  to  sacred  things.  This  raised  an 
interesting  question  as  to  the  introduction  of  profane  subjects  into  sacred 
architecture.  But  lately,  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  he  had  been  examining  some 
of  the  most  beautiful  specimens  of  ancient  architecture,  and  had  found 
that  the  most  spirited  parts  of  it  had  reference  to  hunting.  He  wondered 
very  much  that  our  English  squires  were  not  inspired  so  to  perpetuate 
the  memory  of  their  hunting  achievements  on  the  pillars  of  their  churches. 
We  hear  much  praise  of  hunting  as  a  source  of  energy,  and  of  the  rifle 
as  a  great  and  useful  thing  ;  it  may  be  so,  and  the  praise  of  hunting 
rightly  bestowed  ;  and  if  so,  why  should  it  seem  ridiculous  that  we  should 
follow  the  pomp  of  Oluny,  and  immortalize  in  our  churches  our  noble 
pursuits  and  great  possessions  }  " 

he  MS.  for  the  lecture  contains  the  following  passage  in  which  Ruskin  discusses 

t.  Bernard's     severe  lessons  "  in  architecture  : — 

"It  had  been  well  if  the  architects  of  the  great  cathedrals  had  also 
listened  to  his  lesson.  I  have  myself  pleaded  much  in  defence  of  luxuriant 
ornament  [see,  for  instance,  Vol.  VIII.  pp.  51,  52]  ;  but  I  have  never 
disguised  the  main  fact  that  through  the  wantonness  of  unchastised  fancy 
and  redundance  of  ostentatious  labour,  Gothic  architecture  exhausted, 
while  it  disgraced,  itself  [see  ibid.,  pp.  97-99]  ;  made  itself  at  last  a  mere 
weariness  of  pride,  and  vanished.  St.  Bernard's  influence  would  not  only 
have  checked  this  evil,  at  the  time  when  it  first  exhibited  itself  in  the 
overcharged  incrustation  of  the  porches  of  Rheims ; — it  was  still  more 
authoritative  in  arresting,  so  far  as  the  Cistercians  were  concerned,  the 
sculpture  of  meaningless  or  monstrous  grotesque,  which  in  all  other  schools 


246 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


and  restricting  itself  always  to  the  use  of  materials  nearest 
to  their  hand,^  produced  types  of  rational  and  beautiful 
structure  of  which  the  remains,  in  our  age  of  iron,  arej 
still  held  sacred  to  the  memory  of  the  Cathohc  Church,i 
and  can  scarcely  be  used  in  a  civil  building  without  a 
sense  of  profanity. 

24.  The  severe  lessons,  I  have  said,  admitting  the 
popular  impression  of  them.  The  loving  lessons  had  been 
a  juster  word.  He  was  the  first  of  the  noble  Puritans,  in 
the  rejection  of  all  that  was  unseemly,  luxurious,  or  vain 
in  the  pretended  service  of  God.  He  was  the  head  andi| 
captain  of  the  great  race  of  northern  farmers,  who  them- 
selves preached,  and  to  purpose,  their  more  than  one 
sermon  a  week,  and  stubbed  Thornaby  Waste  ^  as  well. 
But  all  this  he  was  because  he  loved  God,  and  believed, 
with  all  his  heart  and  soul  and  strength.  And  whateverj 
in  the  fullest  glow  of  unsullied  Christianity — whatever  ofj 
comforting  or  purifying  in  the  thoughts  of  a  future  statej 
we  have  associated  most  intimately  with  our  social  affections 
and  earthly  work,  you  will  find  to  have  been  first  rooted^ 
in  the  conviction  and  the  benevolence  of  St.  Bernard. 

of  Gothic  remained  to  their  shame :  seldom  without  base  undercurrent! 
of  unclean  jest,  or  even  frank  and  fearless  scurrility,  and  a  delight  in  dis| 
torted,  impossible,  or  unnatural  form,  which  reached  its  worst  types  iu  th^' 
dreadful  Renaissance  grotesques  of  jewellery  and  armour  whose  golden  abj 
horrence  fills  the  treasuries  of  the  Louvre,  and  infects  and  pollutes  you| 
English  schools  in  every  elementary  branch  of  them  to  this  day."  ^ 

For  another  reference  to  the  Louvre  armour,  etc.,  see  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul 

§  102  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

1  [Here,  again,  Ruskin  digressed  somewhat  in  the  spoken  lecture.    The  abstraciu 

in  The  Art  Journal  says  : —  ] 
Toward  the  close  of  his  lecture,  he  paused  to  give  an  account  of  tht; 
way  in  which  the  old  walls  of  Fiesole  were  built.  Of  late  at  Florence,  he 
said,  they  had  been  doing  some  useful  things,  and  among  others  had  du^ 
down  to  the  foundations  of  the  walls  of  Fiesole  and  found  out  how  the} 
were  built.  They  are  of  the  same  stone  as  the  rock  itself,  fitted  on  to  th< 
rock  and  to  each  other  without  alteration,  but  with  the  greatest  ingenuity  | 
an  example  of  the  noblest  kind  of  building,  raised  '  out  of  the  rock  on  th(| 
rock,  with  the  nature  of  the  rock  in  them  and  the  nature  of  the  man  iif 
them,'  as  in  all  great  architecture." 

On  this  subject,  see  Ruskin's  letter  to  Miss  Allen,  given  in  the  Introduction 

above,  p.  xliv.] 

^  [For  the  reference  here  to  Tennyson's  Northern  Farmer^  compare  Vol.  XX 
p.  87 ;  Vol.  XXIIL  p.  331  ;  and  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  498.] 


11.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE  247 


25.  The  name  of  his  birthplace,  you  may  easily  remem- 
)er;  and  the  spot  of  it  you  may  reach,  by  no  toilsome, 
10  irrational  pilgrimage. 

But  two  short  miles  to  the  north  of  Dijon,  only  just 
ar  enough  to  detach  them  completely  from  the  new 
uburban  city,  rise  the  little  hill  and  village  of  La  Fontaine. 
Viound,  rather  than  hill,  it  should  be  called  ;  an  outlier  of 
he  thin-bedded  Jura  limestone  which  forms  all  the  long 
oteau  to  the  west  of  Dijon  and  Macon.  Steep  enough 
he  little  mound,  almost  craggy  on  one  side,  sloping  down 
)n  the  other  with  its  rough-built  village  some  150  feet 
nto  the  plain,  but  completely  insulated,  and  the  summit 
)f  it  not  more  than  a  furlong  square,  occupied  by  a  small 
armhouse,  and  its  yet  smaller  garden.  Farmhouse  built 
acre  or  less  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  older  chateau,  itself 
Iso  now  in  process  of  demolition,  or  readjustment  to  a 
Qodern  chapel,  enlarging  from  the  recess  behind  the  altar, 
vhich  occupies  the  exact  site  of  the  room  in  which  St. 
Sernard  was  born. 

26.  Feudal  castle  it  was,  remember :  no  stone  of  it  now 
eft  on  another ;  but  you  may  stand  at  the  edge  of  the 
ittle  garden,  on  the  rock  where  his  childish  feet  first  stood 
irm;  the  simple  kinds  of  the  wild  flowers  he  knew  still 
lestle,  or  wander,  there,  unchanged ;  the  soft  dingles  of 
he  Cote  d'Or  cast  still  the  same  shadows  in  the  morning 
ight;  eastward,  the  cliffs  and  folds  of  Jura,  and  the  one 
rvhite  cloud  beyond,  that  never  fades ; — all  these  were,  of 
lis  life,  the  same  part  that  they  are  of  ours ;  how  far  his 
^ork  and  thoughts  are  still  to  be  with  us,  can  scarcely  be 
udged  well,  here  in  our  London  circus;  you  would  judge 
Df  them  otherwise,  I  believe,  in  looking  from  his  native 
'ock  down  the  vast  vale  of  the  Saone,  where,  only  fifteen 
niles  to  the  south,  the  lines  of  poplar  and  aspen  that  soften 
:he  horizon,  grow  by  the  idle  streams  of  what  was  once — 
Citeaux. 

27.  Nothing  is  left  of  the  abbey  walls ;  a  modern 
industrial  school  occupies  their  site.    The  only  vestige  left 


248 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


of  times  even  a  little  separated  from  our  own  is  a,  literally,, 
moated  grange,  where  a  wide  pond,  almost  a  lake  of  abso-j 
lutely  quiet  water,  lulled  among  its  reeds,  is  deep  round 
the  foundation  stones  of  a  granary,  outbuilding  once  of  tk 
Cistercian  farm. 

The  first  brothers  who  settled  there,  those  from  the 
abbey  of  Molesmes,  had  hard  times  for  many  a  day.  The 
marshes  would  not  drain,  the  seeds  would  not  grow;  the 
monks  themselves  died>  one  by  one,  of  damp  and  fatigue,  i 
They  had  to  rise  at  two  in  the  morning  for  matins;  it  J 
was  not  right  to  go  to  sleep  again  afterwards, — ^they  were  ' 
required  to  meditate  till  dawn,  but  I  suppose,  by  Heaven's;  t 
grace,  sometimes  nodded.    They  had  to  work  with  strength'  1 
of  hand  seven  hours  a  day,  at  one  time  or  another.    Dinedj  it 
at  twelve;  no  animal  food  allowed  except  in  sickness,  and  i 
only  a  pound  and  a  half  of  bread ;  vegetables,  I  suppose 
what  they  would,  except  on  fast  days, — total,  twice  a  week  t 
as  far  as  I  can  make  out.    Common  human  blood  could"  i 
not  stand  it ;  the  marsh  of  Citeaux  was  too  deadly  foil  i 
them,  and  they  died,  and  died,  nameless  people,  foolisl 
people,  what  you  choose  to  call  them, — yet  they  died  foi 
you,  and  for  your  children.  s 

28.  At  last  Bernard  heard  of  them — then  a  youth,  jusl  ! 
back  from  Paris  University.  Gathered  a  few  more  fier} 
ones,  of  his  own  sort,  and  plunged  into  the  marsh  to  th< 
rescue.  The  poor  Abbot  and  his  forlorn  hope  of  friar 
went  out  to  meet  them,  singing  songs  of  deliverance.  Ii 
less  than  twenty-five  years  there  were  more  than  sixtj 
thousand  Cistercian  monks,  at  work  on  any  bit  of  trench 
able  ground  they  were  allowed  to  come  at,  between  th< 
bay  of  Genoa  and  the  Baltic. 

29.  Trenchable  ground,  I  say,  with  intention;  for  ther( 
were  two  things,  mind  you,  that  the  Cistercians  alway 
wanted:  the  ground  on  which  they  could  do  most  good 
the  water  with  which  they  could  do  most  work.  Therefor* 
in  England  you  always  find  the  monastery  at  the  poin 
of  the  valley  where  the  stream  first  becomes  manageabL 


11.  MENDING  THE  SIEVE 


249 


1  the  level,  and  yet  where  the  mill-wheel  would  still  turn 
errily. 

Only,  the  defect  of  the  whole  institution  to  my  own 
)or  mind  is,  that  you  get  the  mill  indeed,  and  the  miller, 
it  not  the  miller's  daughter !  ^  And  in  that  degree  I  own 
yself  still  a  bigoted  Protestant, — that  Mysie  Happer 
I  ems  to  me  a  most  laudable  adjunct  to  the  Cistercian 
l  onomy,  and  that  I  can  imagine  benighted  persons  who 
ould  be  much  better  helped  by  the  good  heart  and  good 
oks  of  Mysie  than  by  any  higher  images  of  the  Queen 
.  *  the  Angels.  Howbeit,  whatever  good  there  may  be  for 
arsons  of  higher  temperament,  in  Madonnas  del  Sisto  or 
4  Cardellino,^  of  course  it  is  St.  Bernard  who  begins  all 
at  for  them,  with  the  rest  of  his  beginnings. 

30.  In  1090  he  is  born  at  La  Fontaine,  and  whatever 
;  loveliest  in  chivalry  and  ladyhood  comes  after  that.  You 
ive  trusted  the  traditions  of  them  now  to  the  overseer's 
etory  chimney,  to  the  squire's  threshing  machine,  to  the 
oard's  school,  industrial  and  other.  For  all  these  you 
l  ive  one  watchword, — "  Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow 
e  die : "  ^  the  exact  contradiction  to  St.  Bernard's — "  Let 
j  watch  and  pray,  for  to-morrow  we  live." 

It  is  not  mine  to  tell  you  which  of  these  is  true ;  but 
ere  is  one  word  that  is  true  for  the  feeblest  of  us,  and 
r  all  it  should  be  enough.  "  Let  us  labour  joyfully  while 
e  have  the  light.  The  night  cometh; — but  thou  knowest 
)t  what  shall  be  on  the  morrow."* 

1  [The  MS.  adds  :— 

,  .  .  daughter.  In  Scott's  perfect  rendering  of  the  Cistercian  system 
in  decline,  he  marks  with  a  precision  exquisitely  intuitive,  the  separation 
of  the  Miller  and  the  Bridgeward  from  the  convent.  Of  old  the  Miller 
and  the  Pontifex  were  beyond  all  other  lay  brothers  the  attached  servants 
of  the  rest.  For  my  own  part  I  can  only  speak  as  one  of  those  benighted 
persons  who  think  Mysie  Happer  an  extremely  laudable  adjunct  to  the 
Cistercian  economy,  and  can  fancy  that  people  may  be  a  great  deal  more 
helped  .  .  ." 

T  Mysie  Happer,  the  daughter  of  the  miller,  see  The  Monastery,  chaps,  xiii.  seq.^ 
^  For  other  references  to  these  pictures  by  Raphael,  at  Dresden  and  Florence, 

e  the  General  Index.] 
^  [1  Corinthians  xv.  32.] 
*  [John  ix.  4;  James  i v.  14.] 


APPENDIX 


ON  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  CLUNY 

"  Under  Charlemagne,  the  religious "  (meaning  monastic)  "  establishment  i 
lield  the  head  (tenaient  la  tete)   of  public  instruction,  of  agriculture,  ti  i 
manufacture,  of  the  arts  and  of  the  sciences.     They  alone  of  politic  4 
bodies  presented  regular  and   stable   constitutions.     Out  of  their  boso) 
came  all  the  men  destined  to  play  any  part  in  the  world  outside  of  th 
career  of  arms.    From  its  foundation"  (say  in  505)  ''to  the  year  of  tb 
Council  of  Constance,  1005,  the  order  of  St.  Benedict  had  founded  fiftee 
thousand  and  seventy  abbeys  throughout  the  world  then  known ;  give 
to  the  Church  twenty-four   popes,  two  hundred  cardinals,  four  hundre 
archbishops,  and  seven  thousand  bishops. ^ 

"  But  this  prodigious  influence  had  been  the  cause  *  of  numerous  abuse 
The  rule  of  St.  Benedict  had  been  far  relaxed  in  the  tenth  century;  th 
periodical  invasions  of  the  Normans  had  destroyed  the  monasteries  an 
dispersed  the  monks ;  " — (and  this  "  dispersion,"  mind  you,  which  historiai 
speak  of  as  if  it  were  merely  the  driving  chaff  before  the  wind,  means- 
for  human  creatures  who  have  hearts — much  more  than  scattering, 
means  heart-breaking.  For  one  monk  who  broke  his  vows  in  pride  < 
weakness,  hundreds  were  driven  from  the  peace  and  fruition  of  their  fi 
filment,  in  despair)  ''misery,  and  the  disorders  which  are  the  consequenc 
of  misery,  altered  the  characters  of  the  institution,  and  feudal  morcelleme 
completed  the  ruin  of  what  the  abuse  of  riches  and  power,  as  well  ; 
the  misfortune  of  the  time,  had  already  undermined.  Modern  civilizatio 
scarcely  born  under  the  reign  of  Charlemagne,  seemed  expiring  in  tl 
tenth  century,  but  from  the  order  of  St.  Benedict,  reformed  by  the  abbo 
of  Cluny  and  the  rule  of  Citeaux,  enduring  shoots  of  new  life  were  i 
spring. 

^  Not  the  '^  cause,"  rightly  thinking  of  the  matter  ;  the  indefinitely  increast 
monastic  power  was  not  the  origin  of  abuses,  but  became  the  inevitably  imperfe 
and  decaying  subject  or  sufferer  of  them,  as  the  trunk  of  a  great  tree  decays  i 
wardly  or  is  knotted  and  warped  outwardly,  while  yet  its  branches  are  green,  ai 
its  vital  functions  for  a  time  retained.  The  "  abuses,"  as  the  following  sentenc 
show,  were  rather  those  of  the  outward  world  than  of  the  monasteries. 


*  [Viollet-le-Duc,  Diet,  de  P Architecture,  tom.  i.  p.  245  (in  the  article  "Ard 
tecturc  ").] 

250 


APPENDIX 


251 


"In  the  tenth  century'^'  Cluny  was  a  Httle  village  in  the  district  of 
aeon,  which  had  become  by  bequest  a  part  of  the  estates  of  William, 
terwards  called  the  Pious,  Duke  of  Aquitaine.  Towards  the  close  of  his 
e" — (I  must  now  go  on  in  my  own  words) — he  wished  to  commend  his 
ul  and  the  souls  of  his  ancestors  to  God,  by  founding  a  new  monastery, 
f  the  superstition,  if  he  please  to  call  it  so,  I  pray  the  kindly  reader  to 
ink,  if  not  with  respect,  at  least  with  pity  :  and  I  assure  the  proud  and 
ikindly  reader — whose  eyes  may  fall  on  the  passage— that  the  state  of 
ind  is  nobler  and  wiser  in  which  men  give  lands  away  in  the  hope 

commending  their  souls  to  God,  than  that  in  which  they  let  them  at 
ction  to  swindling  builders,  raise  their  rents  on  industrious  farmers, 
.mble  them  away  in  hells  at  watering-places,  or  borrow  money  on  them 
r  their  menus  plaisirs.  For  the  rest,  Duke  William  did  not  defer  his 
;sign  to  his  last  hour,  but  while  yet  able  to  govern  his  lands  and  judge 

their  fitness  for  this  or  the  other  purpose,  he  sent  for  a  monk  whom  he 
uld  trust  as  a  friend,  Bernon,  Abbot  of  Gigny  and  Baume,  and  with  him 
iited  personally  the  whole  of  his  estates, "j*  to  fix  on  a  proper  place  for  the 
undation  of  the  new  abbey.  "'They  arrived  at  last,'  says  the  chronicle, J 
1  a  place  so  far  removed  from  all  human  society,  that  it  seemed  in  some 
rt  the  image  of  the  celestial  solitude/  §  It  was  Cluny.  But  when 
e  Duke  objected  that  it  would  not  be  possible  to  establish  a  monastic 
ciety  in  that  place,  because  of  the  hunters  and  their  dogs !  who  filled  the 
rest  with  which  the  country  was  covered,  Bernon  replied,  laughing, 
^rive  away  the  dogs,  and  fetch  the  friars;  know  you  not  whether  will 
eld  the  better  profit,  the  hounds'  yelp  or  the  monks'  prayer.?'" 

M.  Lorain's  translation  of  the  Duke's  deed  of  gift^  is  throughout  of 
itreme  interest,  but  I  must  limit  myself  here  to  the  following  centrally 
iportant  passages : — 

"All  my  domain  of  Cluny,  and  all  that  is  dependent  on  it,  farms, 
atories,  slaves  of  both  sexes,  vineyards,  fields  under  culture,  waters,  mills, 
jaadows,  forests,  and  wild  land,  I,  William,  and  my  wife  Ingelberge, 
gether  give  to  the  fore-named  apostles  (Peter  and  Paul):  first,  for  the 
/e  of  God;  then  also  for  the  love  (or  sake)  of  the  King  Eudes,  my 

*  The  reader  will  take  note  of  the  continually  reinforced  importance  of  the 
rdinal  divisions  of  time  we  at  first  assumed  ^  at  the  close  of  the  fifth,  tenth, 
d  fifteenth  centuries.  The  actual  date  of  the  first  founding  of  Cluny  above  told 
909. 

t  Personal — it  is  not  said  of  what  extent.    The  vast  titular  dukedom,  Aquitaine, 
puld  imply  a  proportional  estate  of  residence  to  which  the  bequest  of  Cluny  would 
a  scarcely  observed  addition. 

X  VioUet-le-Duc  does  not  say  what  chronicle  ;  but  refers  to  the  Histoire  de 

Ibbaye  de  Cluny,  par  P.  Lorain,  Paris,  1845,  p.  16. 
§  In  all  such  chance  expressions,  or  indications  without  distinct  expression, 
a  true  desire  for  solitude  as  one  of  the  conditions  of  religious  felicity,  it  must 
remembered  that  the  real  meaning  is  always  that  of  being  as  a  separate  Spirit, 

one  with  God.    "  Thou,  when  thou  prayest,  pray  to  thy  Father  which  is  in 

cret."  3 


1  [Cited  in  full  by  VioUet-le-Duc,  vol.  i.  pp.  246-249.] 

[See  above,  pp.  231-232.] 
3  [Matthew  vi.  6.] 


252 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


Lord ;  and  of  my  father  and  my  mother ;  for  me  also,  for  my  wife,  for  ; 
my  sister  Albane,  who  left  me  these  possessions,  for  all  the  members  ofJ  i 
our  family,  and  for  the  faithful  persons  attached  to  our  service,  and  for 
the  maintenance  and  integrity  of  the  Catholic  Religion.  But  I  give  thesei  ' 
lands  on  condition  that  a  monastery  under  regular  orders  shall  be  built  at  i: 
Cluny,  to  the  honour  of  the  apostles  Peter  and  Paul;  and  that  therein  s 
shall  be  united  a  society  of  monks  living  according  to  the  rule  of  St;  i! 
Benedict,  possessing,  detaining  (Metenant '),  and  governing  the  things;  \ 
now  given  in  perpetuity,  so  that  this  house  may  become  the  venerable  i 
abode  of  prayer;  that  it  may  be  filled  without  ceasing  by  faithful  wishes  t 
and  pious  petitions;  and  that  therein  may  be  sought  always,  with  vivid  ill 
desire  and  heai'tfelt  ardour,  the  miracles  of  Communion  with  God."  i 

Now  observe  you  have  here  a  perfect,  authoritative,  and  indisputable  i 
type  of  the  tenth-century  Catholicism  in  a  knight's  mind.    Fifth-century  ! 
Catholicism,  seventh-century  Catholicism,  are  different  from  this,  and  thejl  5 
are  beautiful,  in  their  own  places  and  times,  in  the  minds  of  good  meij  i\ 
and  women.    We  will  examine  them  in  their  order,^  only  first  here  is  wha  t 
they  lead  up  to — with  the  good,  or  evil,  or  error  that  it  means — here  i 
your  Lord  of  lands  and  men,  giving  away  so  many  square  miles  of  lan( 
with  the  inhabitants  thereof,  slaves,  and  other,  (no  slaves  forced  to  worlj  -  jl 
underground  and  be  blown  to  pieces  by  scores  every  week,  like  ours ;  o]|  \ 
to  pass  their  lives  in  learning  to  blow  other  people  to  pieces  ;  but  hard'  ^ 
working,   healthy  creatures,  raising  their  own  food  and   clothing,  happ;  | 
when  they  were  honest,  and   raised  according  to  their   merit, — emigrate  1 
ing,  when  they  did  so,  with  their  landlord  for  leader  of  the  expedition),— j  ii 
giving  away,  I  say,  the  Land,  and  the  Waters,  and  the  Birds  and  the  Beast'  ' 
and  the  creeping  things,  and  the  Adams  and  Eves,  and  all  the  goodnes 
of  the  days  of  its  creation,  for  the  maintenance  of  a  certain  separate  grou 
of  select  persons,  in  a  miraculou:;  communion  with  God. 

What  you  please  to  think  of  all  this  is  not  my  present  business,  onl 
to  state  the  facts  to  you  indisputably, 

I  take  up  now  Viollet-le-Duc's  summary  of  them,  vol.  i.  p.  123 : — 

"  In  909^  Duke  William  of  Aquitaine  had  founded  the  abbey  of  Glum 
and  given  the  lands  of  it  to  the  apostles  Peter  and  Paul. 

"  A  bull  of  John  IX.,  in  March  932,  confirms  the  charter  of  Willian 
and  frees  the  monastery  'from  all  dependence  on  any  King,  Bishop,  c 
Count  whatsoever,  and  from  any  even  of  Duke  William's  own  family.' 

''You  must  not  judge  this  intervention  of  the  Roman  Pontiffs  b 
modern  ideas.  You  must  reflect  with  conviction  *  that  in  the  midst  ( 
general  anarchy,  of  these  thrusting  encroachments  of  all  powers,  on 
against  another,  of  this  unbridled  oppression  by  brutal  force,  the  sovt 
reignty  (' suzerainte '), — accepted  by  the  chair  of  St.  Peter  could  oppos 
an  invincible  barrier  to  material  force,  could  establish  spiritual  unity,  an 
constitute  a  moral  force  of  immeasurable  power  in  the  full  heart  of  ba 
barism.    And  that  was  actually  what  happened.    St.  Anselm,  Archbishop  < 

"^11  faut  songer" — Laconic  and  firm  French,  not  otherwise  translatable  wii 
less  lengthy  English. 


^  [A  reference  to  the  intended  continuation  of  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us.] 


APPENDIX 


253 


nterbury,  St.  Hugo,  Abbot  of  Cluny,  and  Gregory  VII.,  are  the  great 
ures  which  rule  this  epoch,  and  establish,  no  more  to  be  overthrown,* 
e  independence  of  the  clergy.  As  may  well  be  believed,  the  popula- 
ms  were  not  indifferent  in  their  great  debates ;  they  saw  rise  round  them, 
r  an  efficacious  refuge  f  against  oppression,  these  monasteries  in  which 
ire  concentrated  the  men  of  intelligence,  the  Spirits  d' elite,  who  in  the 
e  strength  given  by  profound  conviction,  that  of  a  regular  and  devoted 
e,  held  in  check  all  the  great  worldly  power  of  the  age.  'Opinion,'  to 
e  a  modern  word,  was  all  for  them,  and  it  was  not  their  least  support ; 
e  regular  clergy  then  gathered  into  and  around  themselves  all  the  hopes 

the  lower  orders.  Therefore  you  must  not  be  astonished  if  during  the 
3venth  and  part  of  the  twelfth  century  they  became  the  centre  of  all  in- 
ence,  all  progress,  and  all  knowledge.    Everywhere  they  founded  schools 

which  were  taught  letters,  philosophy,  theology,  the  sciences  and  the 
ts.  At  the  Abbey  of  Bee,  Lanfranc  and  St.  Anselm,  being  Priors,  did 
t  disdain  to  instruct  the  secular  youth,  to  correct,  during  their  vigils,| 
e  errors  in  the  manuscripts  of  Pagan  authors,  of  the  Holy  Writings,  or 
the  Fathers.  At  Cluny  the  most  attentive  cares  §  were  given  to  teach- 
y.  Ulric  consecrates  two  chapters  of  his  Customs  of  Cluny  \\  in  detailing 
e  duties  of  the  masters  towards  the  children,  or  adults  confided  to  them, 
'he  greatest  prince  was  not  educated  with  more  care  in  the  palace  of 
ngs  than  was  the  least  of  the  children  of  Cluny.' " 

Now,  observe,  the  principles  of  teaching  in  their  schools  were  not 
bunded"  rvith  the  schools.  There  was  no  new  system,  no  new  philo- 
phy,  no  new  science,  set  up  for  a  new  light  of  the  world  by  the  Priors 
I  Cluny.  The  teaching  throughout  was  the  teaching  of  Charlemagne  :  he 
the  Founder  of  the  Schools  of  France ;  and  through  all  the  ruin  of  his 
(nporal  dynasty,  what  he  appointed  to  be  taught  of  sacred  and  everlast- 
l  truth  and  righteousness  was  still  taught  by  the  patience  and  cherished 

the  hearts  of  his  clergy  : — 

"The  schools  founded  by  Charlemagne H  rose  under  the  shelter  of  the 
urches;  there  necessarily  took  refuge  all  intelligence  devoted  to  the 
idy  of  the  sciences  and  arts.  Geometry,  drawing,  sculpture  and  painting 
uld  be  taught  only  in  the  establishments  which  preserved  yet  a  little  of 
Im  and  tranquillity  in  the  midst  of  the  frightful  chaos  of  the  Carlo- 
agian  epoch.**    And  towards  the  end  of  the  tenth  century,  at  the  moment 

*  "D'un  maniere  inebranlable." — Of  course  the  Priests'  office,  once  the  apostle's, 
=iy  to-day  be  forfeited  or  sold,  as  in  old  days,  but  never,  by  external  force,  over- 
rown. 

t  Refuge,  meaning,  not  mere  Sanctuary,  but  Fortress. 
X  Veilles— "Watches  of  the  Night." 

§  '*Les  soins  les  plus  attentifs." — The  French  plural  is  able  to  express  the 
vided  and  opposite  cares  of  true  education  where  our  English  '^care"  does  little 
are  than  indicate  general  anxiety,  perhaps  acting  only  in  a  single  direction,  and 
at  a  blundering  one. 

II  Udalrici  Antiq.  Consuet.  Clun.  Mon.  lib.  III.,  ch.  viii.  et  ix. 

if  VioUet-le-Duc,  under  the  word  "  Architecte,"  p.  108,  where  it  is  of  extreme 
terest  to  see  how  his  mind  instantly  fastens  on  Cluny  as  the  Mistress  of  his 
ai  Art. 

**  Chaotic,  however,  only  in  central  Europe,  and  only  among  the  military  powers. 


254 


VALLE  CRUCIS 


when  it  seemed  that  society  was  about  to  extinguish  itself*  in  barbarism,! 
an  abbey  founded  itself  at  Cluny,  and  from  the  bosom  of  that  religious! 
order,  for  more  than  a  century,  came  out  nearly  all  the  men  who,  with  an; 
incomparable  patience  and  energy,  arrested  the  progress  of  the  barbarism— -I 
put  order  into  the  chaos,  and  regulated  the  education — of  Western  Europei 
from  Spain  to  Poland.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Cluny  gave  to  Western; 
Europe,  not  only  her  popes,  her  bishops,  her  ambassadors,  and — so  faii 
as  their  education  reached — her  kings,  but  also  her  architects,  painters,! 
physicians,  reforming  scholars,  and  school-professors.  Raze  Cluny  from  the! 
eleventh  century,  and  we  find  scarcely  anything  left  but  darkness,  grossli 
ignorance,  and  monstrous  abuses."  I 

*  S'eteindre. — Another  precious  French  idiom.  Let  no  society — no  person — everi 
speak  of  their  "extinction"  but  as  self-caused. 


Ill 

THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 
(1883) 


I 

I 

i 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND. 

LECTURES  GIVEN  IN  OXFORD, 


BY 

JOHN  RUSKIN,  D.C.L.,  LL.D., 

3N0RARY  STUDENT  OF  CHRIST  CHURCH,  AND  HONORARY  FELLOW  OF  CORPUS-CHRISTI  COLLEGE, 

DURING  HIS 

SECOND  TENURE  OF  THE  SLADE  PROFESSORSHIP, 


XXXIII. 


GEORGE  ALLEN, 
SUNNYSIDE,  ORPINGTON,  KENT. 
1884. 


R 


[Bibliographical  Note. — The  Lectures,  ultimately  published  under  the  title 
The  Art  of  England,  were  given  by  Ruskin  at  Oxford  on  his  re-election 
(January  1883)  to  the  Slade  Professorship  of  Fine  Art. 

Lecture  I.  (announced  in  the  Oxford  University  Gazette,  March  6,  1883, 
as  on  '^Recent  English  Art")  was  delivered  on  Friday,  March  9.  It  was 
reported  in  the  St.  James  s  Budget,  March  16,  1883  ("Mr.  Ruskin's  Latest"), 
and  this  report  was  reprinted  in  Igdrasil,  March  1892,  vol.  iii.  pp.  267-268, 
and  thence  in  the  privately-issued  Buskiniana,  Part  ii.,  1892,  pp.  240-241. 
A  note  from  the  report  is  now  added  under  the  text  (p.  286). 

"There  was  a  scene  of  great  enthusiasm  when  Mr.  Ruskin  appeared 
to  deliver  his  first  lecture  on  his  re-election.  Although  there  was  a  fair 
sprinkling  of  ladies,  young  and  old,  the  majority  of  the  audience  was 
made  up  of  undergraduates ;  and  as  they  had  begun  to  assemble  an  hour 
and  a  half  beforehand,  some  of  the  principal  persons  in  the  University 
were  unable  to  obtain  admission.  The  Vice-Chancellor,  who  attended 
with  the  proctors,  rose  at  the  end  of  the  lecture  to  say  a  few  words  of 
welcome,  and  his  graceful  remarks  were  received  with  a  storm  of  ap- 
plause" (Truth,  March  15,  1883). 

Lectures  II.,  III.,  IV.  were  delivered  in  the  ensuing  term,  each  being 
given  twice.  They  were  first  announced  in  the  University  Gazette  (April  13) 
as  on  "Recent  English  Art  (continued)."  In  the  Gazette  of  May  1,  1883, 
the  following  further  notice  appeared : — 

"  The  Professor  gives  notice  that  persons  desirous  of  attending  his  Lectures 
will  be  admitted  only  by  tickets,  to  be  obtained  at  the  Euskin  School,  University 
Galleries.  The  names  of  applicants  must  be  entered  on  or  before  Monday,  May  7  ; 
the  tickets  will  then  be  left  till  called  for.  Members  of  the  University  and 
residents  in  Oxford  and  the  neighbourhood  will  have  precedence. 

"  The  Lectures  will  be  subsequently  delivered  in  London  for  non-residents. 

"Subject  of  Lectures:  Arts  of  England  (continued). 

"Saturday,  May  12,  and  Wednesday,  May  16.  Mythic  Schools  (Burne- Jones 
and  G.  F.  Watts). 

"Saturday,  May  19,  and  Wednesday,  May  23.  Classic  Schools  (Sir  F.  Leighton 
and  Alma-Tadema). 

"Saturday,  May  26,  and  Wednesday,  May  30.  Fairy  Land  (Mrs.  Allingham 
and  Kate  Greenaway)." 

The  next  notice  (University  Gazette,  May  8)  shows  that  the  demand  for 
tickets  was  great: — 

"  Professor  Ruskin's  Lectures.— For  the  convenience  of  persons  wishing  to 
attend  these  Lectures,  the  doors  of  the  Lecture  Theatre  at  the  University  Museum 
will  be  opened  half-an-hour  before  the  beginning  of  the  lecture.  The  two  front 
rows  of  seats  will  be  reserved  for  Members  of  the  University  and  friends  intro- 
duced by  them.  Each  Lecture  will  be  repeated,  but  it  is  earnestly  hoped  that 
those  who  have  attended  the  first  Lecture  will  not  jJrevent  others  from  attending 
the  repeated  one." 

In  the  following  day's  Gazette,  yet  another  notice  appeared:—- 

"  Professor  Ruskin's  Lectures :  Explanatory  Notice. — For  the  sake  of  preserving 
order,  and  at  the  request  of  Mr.  Ruskin,  Members  of  the  University,  as  well  as 
others,  will  only  be  admitted  to  his  Public  Lecture  by  tickets,  which  have  been 
reserved  for  all  Members  of  the  University  who  applied,  so  far  as  there  was  room 
for  them.  At  the  informal  Lecture  which  Mr.  Ruskin  kindly  gives,  admission 
is  also  by  tickets,  but  the  tickets  are  not  reserved  exclusively  for  Members  of 
the  University.    No  person  can  be  admitted  to  either  Lecture  without  a  ticket. 

"B.  JowETT,  Vice-Gkancellor. 

"Balliol  College,  May  8,  1883." 

259 


260 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


Lectures  II.,  III.,  and  IV.  were  reported  (by  E.  T.  Cook)  in  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette  of  May  15,  21,  and  28  respectively.  Ruskin  had  the  lectures 
printed  ])efore  delivery,  but  frequently  digressed  from  the  printed  text. 
The  reports  show  accordingly  some  variations  from  the  lectures  as  published, 
and  tliese  are  now  noted  under  the  text  (pp.  301,  303,  310,  318,  329). 

The  reports  were  reprinted  from  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  in  the  Oxford 
Chronicle  of  May  19,  26,  and  June  2. 

Lectures  V.  and  VI.  were  delivered  in  the  October  term,  being  thus 
announced  in  the  University  Gazette  (October  30,  1883): — 

"The  Professor  will  give  two  Lectures  on  the  Art  of  England  (in  completion 
of  the  series  begun  in  the  Spring  Term)  in  the  Lecture  Theatre  of  the  Museum, 
on  the  following  days,  at  2.30  P.M. 

"Lecture  I.  The  Fireside.  John  Leech  and  John  Tenniel.  Wednesday, 
November  7.    Repeated  on  Saturday,  November  10. 

"Lecture  II.  The  Hillside,  George  Robson  and  Copley  Fielding.  Saturday, 
November  17.    Repeated  on  Wednesday,  November  21. 

"Admission  will  be  by  ticket,  to  be  obtained  at  the  Ruskin  School  in  Beau- 
mont Street.  The  I;ecture-room  will  contain  only  500  persons,  but  550  tickets 
will  be  issued,  it  having  been  found  practically  that  nearly  a  fifth  of  the  tickets 
issued  were  not  presented." 

These  lectures  were  reported  (by  E.  T.  Cook)  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette 
of  November  8  and  19  respectively,  and  thence  reprinted  in  the  Oxford 
Chronicle,  November  10  and  24  ("Mr.  Ruskin  on  Punch").  Notes  from 
the  reports  are  now  added  under  the  text  (pp.  886,  389). 

In  Punch  of  November  17,  1883,  there  was  a  notice  of  Lecture  V., 
headed  '^The    Fireside'  at  Venice;  or.  How  would  it  have  been." 

It  will  have  been  noticed  that  Ruskin  intended  to  repeat  his  lectures 
in  London.  This  was  not  done,  except  that  on  June  5,  1883,  he  delivered 
a  lecture  in  London,  which  was  in  part  a  repetition  of  Lecture  IV.,  with 
a  portion  of  Lecture  I.  The  lecture  was  reported  in  the  Spectator  (June  9, 
1883).  As  the  report  is  mostly  taken  up  with  Miss  Alexander's  drawings, 
it  has  been  printed  in  an  Appendix  to  Vol.  XXXII.  (pp.  535-538). 

ISSUE  IN  PARTS 

The  lectures,  as  already  stated,  were  in  type  before  delivery,  and  they 
were  presently  issued  in  Parts.  The  general  title-page  and  Contents  were 
issued  with  the  last  Part.    The  title-page  was  as  shown  here  on  p.  257. 

Each  Part  was  issued  in  buff-coloured  paper  wrappers,  with  the  title- 
page  (enclosed  in  a  plain  ruled  frame)  repeated  upon  the  front,  the  price 
("One  Shilling")  being  stated  below  the  rule.  Of  each  Part  3000  copies 
were  printed,  llie  price  (Is.)  was  reduced  to  8d.  per  Part  in  July  1893, 
and  7d.  in  January  1901. 

Part  I,  (May  1883).    The  title-page  was:— 

The  Art  of  England.  |  Lectures  given  in  Oxford,  |  by  |  John  Ruskin, 
D.C.L.,  LL.D.  j  Honorary  Student  of  Christ  Church,  and  Honorary 
Fellow  of  Corpus-Christi  College,  |  during  his  |  second  tenure  of  the 
Slade  Professorship.  |  Lecture  I.  [  Realistic  Schools  of  Painting,  j 
George  Allen,  Sunnyside,  Orpington,  Kent,  1883. 

Small  quarto,  pp.  iv.  (unnumbered) -I- 35.  Title-page  (with  blank  reverse), 
pp.  i.-ii.  ;  half-title  (^'  Lecture  I.  |  Realistic  Schools  of  Painting,  j  D.  G. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  261 


Rossetti  and  W.  Holman  Hunt with  blank  reverse,  pp.  iii.-iv. ;  Lecture, 
pp.  1-35. 

Second  Edition  {1S8S),  3000  copies. 

Third  Edition  (1890),  1850  copies. 

Part  II.  (May  1883),  containing  Lecture  II.  Title-page  as  before, 
except  for  "  Lecture  II.  Mythic  Schools  of  Painting."  This  was  repeated 
on  the  half-title,  with  the  addition  of  '^E.  Burne- Jones  and  G.  F.  Watts." 
Pp.  37-72  (half-title,  with  blank  reverse,  pp.  37,  38). 

Second  Edition  (1883),  3000  copies. 

Third  Edition  (1893),  1350  copies. 

Part  III.  (June  1883),  containing  Lecture  III.  On  the  title-page,  "  Lec- 
ture III.  Classic  Schools  of  Painting" — repeated  on  the  half-title,  with 
the  addition  of  "Sir  F.  Leighton,  and  Alma-Tadema."    Pp.  73-113. 

Second  Edition  (1884),  3000  copies. 
Third  Edition  (1898),  900  copies. 

Part  IV.  (July  1883),  containing  Lecture  IV.  On  the  title-page, 
'^Lecture  IV.  Fairy  Land" — repeated  on  the  half-title,  with  the  addition 
of  "Mrs.  Allingham  and  Kate  Greenaway."    Pp.  115-157- 

Second  Edition  (1884),  3000  copies. 

Third  Edition  (1898),  800  copies. 

Part  V.  (November  1883),  containing  Lecture  V.  On  the  title-page, 
"Lecture  V.  The  Fireside" — repeated  on  the  half-title,  with  the  addi- 
tion of  "John  Leech,  and  John  Tenniel."  Pp.  159-197. 

Second  Edition  (1885),  3000  copies. 

Part  VI.  (November  1883),  containing  Lecture  VI.  On  the  title-page, 
"Lecture  VI.  The  Hillside" — repeated  on  the  half-title,  with  the  addition 
of  "George  Robson,  and  Copley  Fielding."    Pp.  199-241. 

With  this  Part  a  slip  was  issued,  containing  the  following : — 

PUBLISHER'S  NOTICE.    THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 

This  work  will  be  completed  by  the  publication,  early  in  the  ensuing  year,  of 
an  extra  number  containing  index  to  the  whole,  and  explanatory  notes;  price 
one  shilling.  The  volume,  including  the  six  lectures  and  appendix  number,  will 
be  supplied  bound  in  cloth  for  eight  shillings. 

December,  1883. 

The  "  explanatory  notes  "  became  an  additional  chapter  called  "  Appendix." 
Second  Edition  (1885),  3000  copies. 

Part  VIL  (July  1884),  containing  this  Appendix,  which  had  not  been 
delivered  as  a  lecture.  On  the  title-page,  "Appendix  and  Index,"  and 
the  date  now  became  "  1884."  Pp.  243-292.  Half-title  ("  Appendix  "),  with 
blank  reverse,  pp.  243-244;  "Appendix,"  pp.  245-272  ;  fly-title  ("Index"), 
with  blank  reverse,  pp.  273-274;  Index  (by  Mr.  Wedderburn),  pp.  275- 
292.  As  the  sections  were  not  numbered,  the  references  in  this  Index 
were  to  pages. 


262 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


In  this  edition,  as  in  all  others  till  the  present,  the  headlines  on  the 
rig-ht-hand  pages  were  not  (as  in  the  present  edition)  the  titles  of  the 
lecturts  Realistic  Schools  of  Painting,"  etc.),  but  the  names  of  the  artists 
("Rossetti  and  Holman  Hunt,"  etc.). 

Second  Edition  (1887),  1000  copies. 

Third  Edition  (1893),  1500  copies. 

SEPARATE  ISSUE  IN  VOLUME  FORM 

On  the  publication  of  Part  VII.,  the  lectures  were  issued  in  volume 
form. 

First  Edition  (1884). — This  was  made  up  of  the  separate  Parts  not  pre- 
viously disposed  of. 

Small  quarto,  pp.  viii. +292.  Half-title  (with  blank  reverse),  pp.  i.-ii. ; 
Title-page  (with  imprint  in  the  centre  of  the  reverse,  Printed  by  |  Hazell, 
Watson,  and  Viney,  Limited,  |  London  and  Aylesbury"),  pp.  iii.-iv.  ;  Con- 
tents (here  p.  265),  with  blank  reverse,  pp.  v.-vi.  ;  Fly-title  to  Lecture  I. 
(with  blank  reverse),  pp.  vii.-viii.  ;  text  of  the  lectures.  Appendix,  and 
Index  (pages  as  in  the  Parts),  pp.  1-292. 

Issued  in  cloth  boards  (some  green,  others  brown),  lettered  across  the 
back,     Ruskin  ]  The  Art  |  of  |  England."    Price  8s. 

Second  Edition  (1887). — Of  each  Part  there  was  a  second  edition,  and 
these  second  editions  were  afterwards  issued  in  volume  form.    The  words 
Second  Edition"  were  printed  on  the  title-page.    The  edition  is  other- 
wise an  exact  reprint  of  the  first. 

A  Third  Edition  was  similarly  made  up  from  those  mentioned  above. 
The  sections  were  not  numbered  in  these  editions. 

ISSUE  WITH  "THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND" 

The  Art  of  England  was  next  issued,  in  1898,  in  a  volume  (uniform 
with  the  Small  Edition  "  of  Ruskin's  other  books)  together  with  the  suc- 
ceeding course  of  lectures  on  The  Pleasures  of  England.  The  text  was 
unchanged,  but  the  date  of  the  delivery  of  the  several  lectures  was  added 
after  the  headings  to  the  chapters,  and  the  sections  were  numbered  (the 
references  in  the  Index  being  changed  from  pages  to  sections).  A  few 
editorial  notes,  containing  references,  were  added  to  the  text. 

First  Edition  (1898). — The  title-page  of  the  volume  is  : — 

The  Art  of  England  |  and  the  |  Pleasures  of  England  |  Lectures  given 
in  Oxford  1  in  1883-1885  |  by  |  John  Ruskin,  D.C.L.,  LL.D.  |  Hono- 
rary Student  of  Christ  Church,  and  Honorary  |  Fellow  of  Corpus 
Christi  College,  Oxford  1  during  his  second  tenure  of  the  Slade  | 
Professorship  |  New  Edition  in  Small  Form  |  George  Allen,  Sunny- 
side,  Orpington  |  and  |  156,  Charing  Cross  Road,  London  |  1898  |  [All 
rights  reserved"]. 

Crown  8vo,  pp.  viii. -1-415.  Half-title  (with  blank  reverse),  pp.  i.-ii.; 
Title-page,  p.  iii. ;  on  p.  iv.  is  the  note,  "  The  following  lectures  on  '  The 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  263 


Art  of  Englaud '  and  '  The  Pleasures  of  England '  were  originally  pub- 
lished separately/'  and  the  imprint — "  Printed  by  Ballantyne,  Hanson  & 
Co.,  At  the  Ballantyne  Press";  Contents  (of  both  courses  of  lectures), 
pp.  v.-vi,  ;  half-title,  The  Art  of  England  "  (with  blank  reverse),  pp.  vii.- 
viii. ;  text  of  The  Art  of  England,  pp.  1-229  ;  Index  (with  half-title),  pp.  231- 
260.    For  the  remainder  of  the  book,  see  below,  p.  416. 

Issued  (April  27,  1898)  in  green  cloth  boards,  lettered  on  the  back, 
"  Ruskin  |  The  Art  |  and  |  The  Pleasures  j  of  |  England."  2000  copies. 
Price  5s.  (reduced  to  3s.  6d.,  January  1904). 

Second  Edition  (1900). — A  reprint  of  the  first  edition ;  with  the  date 
"1900"  and  "Ninth  Thousand  in  small  form"  on  the  title-page.  (This 
description  was  inaccurate  as  applied  to  the  "  small  form.") 

Reprinted  in  1904  ("Tenth  Thousand"). 

Pocket  Edition  (1907). — From  the  electrotype  plates  of  the  edition  last 
described,  a  Pocket  Edition "  was  issued  in  1907,  uniform  with  other 
volumes  (see  Vol.  XV.  p.  6).    The  title-page  is: — 

The  Art  and  Pleasures  |  of  England  |  By  |  John  Ruskin  \  London : 
George  Allen. 

4000  copies.    Price  2s.  6d.  net. 

On  the  reverse  at  the  foot,  July  1907  |  Fourteenth  Thousand  |  All 
rights  reserved." 

Tliere  have  been  unauthorised  American  Editions  of  The  Art  of  England. 


The  Art  oj  England,  among  other  books,  was  reviewed  in  the  Church 
Quarterly  Review,  April  1886,  vol.  22,  pp.  162-188  ("  Materialism  in  Modern 
Art"). 

Notices  of  the  combined  edition  of  1898  appeared  in  St.  George,  July 
1898  (vol.  i.  pp.  154-156),  and  the  Architectural  Review,  December  1898 
(an  interesting  notice,  signed     H.  R."  ;  see  above,  p.  Ixx.  n.). 


Varioe  Lectiones. — Some  differences  between  the  original  edition  and  its 
successors  have  been  described  above.  To  these  it  is  to  be  added  that  in 
§  55,  line  17,  ed.  1  misprinted    anciently"  for  "intently." 

In  the  present  edition,  numerous  mistakes  in  the  Greek  in  §  78  have 
been  corrected  ;  in  §  84  the  passage  from  Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany  is 
not  reprinted;  in  §  112,  line  3,  "Birkett"  is  corrected  to  "Birket"; 
in  §  114,  dots  have  been  inserted  to  mark  places  where  Ruskin  made 
omissions;  in  §  123,  line  14,  souls"  has  been  misprinted  "soul"  in  all 
the  small  editions ;  in  §  128,  in  a  footnote  here,  the  reference  in  all 
previous  editions  has  been  Bible  of  Amiens,  p.  14" — that  is,  to  p.  14  of 
the  Separate  Traveller's  Edition  of  Chapter  iv.  ;  in  §  135,  line  4,  "  Burg- 
maier "  is  corrected  to  ^^Burkmair";  in  §  166,  line  13,  "Cousins"  is 
corrected  to  "Cozens";  in  §  170,  line  9,  the  word  "it"  has  been  omitted 
in  all  previous  editions.] 


1 


CONTENTS 


LECTURE  I 

PAGE 

Realistic  Schools  of  Painting      .......  267 

D.  G.  ROSSETTI  AND  W.  HoLMAN  HuNT 

LECTURE  II 

Mythic  Schools  of  Painting        .  287 

E.  BuRNE-JoNEs  and  G.  F.  Watts 

LECTURE  III 

Classic  Schools  of  Painting  ,  306 

Sib  F.  Leighton  and  Alma  Tadema 

LECTURE  IV 

Fairy  Land  327 

Mrs.  Allingham  and  Kate  Greenaway 

LECTURE  V 

The  Fireside         ..........  350 

John  Leech  and  John  Tenniel 

LECTURE  VI 

The  Hill-Side       ,       .   .  371 

George  Robson  and  Copley  Fielding 

APPENDIX  394 

265 


I 

\ 
I 

( 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


LECTURE  I 
REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING 
D.  G.  ROSSETTI  AND  W.  HOLMAN  HUNT 
(Delivered  9th  March  1883) 

I  AM  well  assured  that  this  audience  is  too  kind,  and  too 
^mpathetic,  to  wish  me  to  enlarge  on  the  mingled  feelings 
:  fear  and  thankfulness,  with  which  I  find  myself  once 
^ain  permitted  to  enter  on  the  duties  in  which  I  am 
mscious  that,  before,  I  fell  short  in  too  many  ways;  and 
I  which  I  only  have  ventured  to  ask,  and  to  accept,  your 
rther  trust,  in  the  hope  of  being  able  to  bring  to  some 
'  their  intended  conclusions  things  not,  in  the  nature  of 
lem,  it  seems  to  me,  beyond  what  yet  remains  of  an  old 
lan's  energy ;  but,  before,  too  eagerly  begun,  and  too 
regularly  followed.  And  indeed  I  am  partly  under  the 
iipression,  both  in  gratitude  and  regret,  that  Professor 
Richmond's  resignation,  however  justly  motived  by  his  wish 
)  pursue  with  uninterrupted  thought  the  career  opened 
)  him  in  his  profession,  had  partly  also  for  its  reason  the 
3urtesy  of  concession  to  his  father  s  old  friend ;  ^  and  his 
wn  feeling  that  while  yet  I  was  able  to  be  of  service 
1  advancing  the  branches  of  elementary  art  with  which 

was  specially  acquainted,  it  was  best  that  I  should  make 
le  attempt  on  lines  already  opened,  and  with  the  aid  of 
Id  friends.    I  am  now  alike  comforted  in  having  left  you, 

^  [For  Sir  William  Richmond's  statement  in  this  connexion,  see  Vol.  XXII. 
xxxii.] 

267 


268 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


and  encouraged  in  return;  for  on  all  grounds  it  was  most 
desirable  that  to  the  imperfect  and  yet  in  many  points  new 
and  untried  code  of  practice  which  I  had  instituted,  the 
foundations  of  higher  study  should  have  been  added  by 
Mr.   Richmond,  in  connection  with  the  methods  of  art- 
education  recognized  in  the  Academies  of  Europe.  And^ 
although  I  have  not  yet  been  able  to  consult  with  him 
on  the  subject,  I  trust  that  no  interruption  of  the  courses 
of  figure  study,  thus  established,  may  be  involved  in  the 
completion,  for  what  it  is  worth,  of  the  system  of  sub-, 
ordinate  exercise  in  natural  history  and  landscape,  indicated! 
in  the  schools  to  which  at  present,  for  convenience'  sakei 
my  name  is  attached;  but  which,  if  they  indeed  deserve 
encouragement,  will,  1  hope,  receive  it  ultimately,^  as  pre 
senting  to  the  beginner  the  first  aspects  of  art,  in  the 
widest,  because  the  humblest,  relation  to  those  of  divinely! 
organized  and  animated  Nature.  | 
2.  The  immediate  task  I  propose  to  myself  is  to  maW 
serviceable,  by  all  the  illustration  I  can  give  them,  the 
now  unequalled  collection  possessed  by  the  Oxford  school: 
of  Turner  drawings  and  sketches,  completed  as  it  has  beei 
by  the  kindness  of  the  Trustees  of  the  National  Gallery 
at  the  intercession  of  Prince  Leopold ;  ^  and  furnishing  th( 
means  of  progress  in  the  study  of  landscape  such  as  th( 
great  painter  himself  only  conceived  the  scope  of  toware 
the  closing  period  of  his  life.    At  the  opening  of  next  term 
I  hope,  with  Mr.  Macdonald's  assistance,  to  have  drawi 
up  a  little  synopsis  of  the  elementary  exercises^  which  ii 
my  earlier  books  have  been  recommended  for  practice  ii 
Landscape, — a  subject  which,  if  you  look  back  to  th« 
courses  of  my  lectures  here,  you  will  find  almost  afFectedl} 
neglected,  just  because  it  was  my  personal  province.*  Othe 
matters  under  deliberation,  till  I  get  them  either  done,  o 

^  [The  room  with  its  collections  is  still  named  the  Ruskin  Drawing  School :  fo 
the  catalogue  of  it,  see  Vol.  XXI.] 

2  [On  this  subject,  see  Vol.  XIII.  p.  liii.] 

^  This  intention,  however,  was  not  carried  out.] 

*  [Compare  below,  §  156,  p.  372.] 


1.  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  269 


itermined,  I  have  no  mind  to  talk  of;  but  to-day,  and  in 
le  three  lectures  which  I  hope  to  give  in  the  course  of 
16  summer  term,^  I  wish  to  render  such  account  as  is 
3ssible  to  me  of  the  vivid  phase  into  which  I  find  our 
nglish  art  in  general  to  have  developed  since  first  I  knew 
:  and,  though  perhaps  not  without  passing  deprecation 
-  some  of  its  tendencies,  to  rejoice  with  you  unqualifiedly 
I  the  honour  which  may  most  justly  be  rendered  to  the 
aders,  whether  passed  away  or  yet  present  with  us,  of 
ngland's  Modern  Painters. 

3.  I  may  be  permitted,  in  the  reverence  of  sorrow,  to 
)eak  first  of  my  much  loved  friend,  Gabriel  Kossetti. 
ut,  in  justice,  no  less  than  in  the  kindness  due  to  death ,^ 

believe  his  name  should  be  placed  first  on  the  list  of 
len,  within  my  own  range  of  knowledge,  who  have  raised 
id  changed  the  spirit  of  modern  Art:  raised,  in  absolute 
i:tainment ;  changed,  in  direction  of  temper.  Rossetti  added 
)  the  before  accepted  systems  of  colour  in  painting,  one 
ased  on  the  principles  of  manuscript  illumination,  which 
ermits  his  design  to  rival  the  most  beautiful  qualities  of 
ainted  glass,  without  losing  either  the  mystery  or  the 
ignity  of  light  and  shade.    And  he  was,  as  I  beheve  it 

now  generally  admitted,  the  chief  intellectual  force  in 
le  establishment  of  the  modern  romantic  school  in  England. 

4.  Those  who  are  acquainted  with  my  former  writings 
lUst  be  aware  that  I  use  the  word  "romantic"  always  in 
noble  sense ;  ^  meaning  the  habit  of  regarding  the  external 
lid  real  world  as  a  singer  of  Romaunts  would  have  re- 
arded  it  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  as  Scott,  Burns,  Byron, 
nd  Tennyson  have  regarded  it  in  our  own  times.  But,  as 
Lossetti's  colour  was  based  on  the  former  art  of  illumina- 
on,  so  his  romance  was  based  on  traditions  of  earlier  and 
lore  sacred  origin  than  those  which  have  inspired  our 

^  [See  Bibliographical  Note;  above,  p.  260.] 

^  [Rossetti  had  died  in  the  preceding  year  (1882).  Ou  the  duties  and  pro- 
'ieties  of  criticism,  see  below,  p.  894  n.] 

^  [See^  for  instance,  Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting,  §§  29-31  (Vol.  XII. 
).  53-55).] 


270 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


highest  modern  romantic  literature.  That  literature  has  ii 
all  cases  remained  strongest  in  dealing  with  contemporar 
fact.  The  genius  of  Tennyson  is  at  its  highest  in  th 
poems  of  "Maud,"  "In  Memoriam,"  and  the  "Northen 
Farmer " ;  but  that  of  Rossetti,  as  of  his  greatest  disciple,! 
is  seen  only  when  on  pilgrimage  in  Palestine.  I 

5.  I  trust  that  Mr.  Holman  Hunt  will  not  think  tha 
in  speaking  of  him  as  Rossetti's  disciple  I  derogate  fron 
the  respect  due  to  his  own  noble  and  determined  genius 
In  all  living  schools  it  chances  often  that  the  disciple  i 
greater  than  his  master ;  and  it  is  always  the  first  sign  o\ 
a  dominant  and  splendid  intellect,  that  it  knows  of  whon 
to  learn.  Rossetti's  great  poetical  genius  justified  my  claim 
ing  for  him  total,  and,  I  believe,  earliest,  originality  in  th 
sternly  materialistic,^^  though  deeply  reverent,  veracity,  wit) 
which  alone,  of  all  schools  of  painters,  this  brotherhood 
Englishmen  has  conceived  the  circumstances  of  the  life  c 
Christ.  And  if  I  had  to  choose  one  picture  which  repre 
sented  in  purity  and  completeness  this  manner  of  thei] 
thought,  it  would  be  Rossetti's  "Virgin  in  the  House  d 
St.  John."^ 

6.  But  when  Holman  Hunt,  under  such  impressive  ir 
fluence,  quitting  virtually  for  ever  the  range  of  world! 
subjects,  to  which  belonged  the  pictures  of  Valentine  an 
Sylvia,  of  Claudio  and  Isabel,  and  of  the  "  Awakenin 
Conscience,"  rose  into  the  spiritual  passion  which  first 
pressed  itself  in  *'The  Light  of  the  World,"  ^  an  instant  an 
quite  final  difference  was  manifested  between  his  method  d 

*  See  §  31  [p.  287]. 

^  [Similarly  in  Lectures  on  Art,  §  55  (Vol.  XX.  p.  63),  Ruskin  speaks  of  tl 
school  as  deriving  its  first  origin  from  Rossetti."  Mr.  Holman  Hunt,  howeve 
in  his  Autobiography,  strongly  combats  the  view  that  he  was  Rossetti's  discip. 
and  that  Rossetti  was  the  leader  in  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement;  he  submits,  c 
the  other  hand,  that  Rossetti  was  his  disciple:  see  his  Pre-Raphaelitism  and  ti 
Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood,  1905,  vol.  i.  pp.  207-208,  vol.  ii.  pp.  418  seq.] 

2  [A  water-colour  drawing,  which  was  in  Lady  Trevelyan's  possession:  s(, 
below,  p.  287.] 

3  [For  Ruskin's  notices  of  ''Valentine  and  Sylvia"  (1851),  see  Vol.  XII.  pp.32 
324-825;  "Claudio  and  Isabella"  (1850),  ibid.,  p.  160;  "The  Awakening  Coi 
science"  (1854),  ibid.,  pp.  338-335;  and  "The  Light  of  the  World"  (1854),  ibio 
pp.  328-331.] 


L  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  271 

(inception,  and  that  of  his  forerunner.     To  Rossetti,  the 
•  Id  and  New  Testaments  were  only  the  greatest  poems  he 
]iew;   and  he  painted  scenes  from  them  with  no  more 
;  tual  belief  in  their  relation  to  the  present  life  and  busi- 
jss  of  men  than  he  gave  also  to  the  "  Morte  d Arthur" 
ad  the  "Vita  Nuova."   But  to  Holman  Hunt,  the  story  of 
e  New  Testament,  when  once  his  mind  entirely  fastened 
(1  it,  became  what  it  was  to  an  old  Puritan,  or  an  old 
atholic  of  true  blood, — not  merely  a  Reality,  not  merely 
le  greatest  of  Realities,  but  the  only  Reality.     So  that 
lere  is  nothing  in  the  earth  for  him  any  more  that  does 
)t  speak  of  that; — there  is  no  course  of  thought  nor  force 
('  skill  for  him,  but  it  springs  from  and  ends  in  that. 

So  absolutely,  and  so  involuntarily — I  use  the  word  in 
J  noblest  meaning^ — is  this  so  with  him,  that  in  all  sub- 
lets which  fall  short  in  the  religious  element,  his  power 
so  is  shortened,  and  he  does  those  things  worst  which  are 
isiest  to  other  men. 

Beyond  calculation,  greater,  beyond  comparison,  happier, 
lan  Rossetti,  in  this  sincerity,  he  is  distinguished  also  from 
m  by  a  respect  for  physical  and  material  truth  which 
:nders  his  work  far  more  generally,  far  more  serenely, 
cemplary. 

7.  The  specialty  of  colour-method  which  I  have  sig- 
ilized  in  Rossetti,  as  founded  on  missal  painting,  is  in 
cactly  that  degree  conventional  and  unreal.  Its  light  is  not 
le  light  of  sunshine  itself,  but  of  sunshine  diffused  through 
)loured  glass.  And  in  object-painting  he  not  only  refused, 
artly  through  idleness,  partly  in  the  absolute  want  of 
pportunity  for  the  study  of  nature  involved  in  his  choice 
!  abode  in  a  garret  at  Blackfriars, — refused,  I  say,  the 
atural  aid  of  pure  landscape  and  sky,  but  wilfully  per- 
srted  and  lacerated  his  powers  of  conception  with  Chinese 
lizzies  and  Japanese  monsters,^  until  his  foliage  looked 
enerally  fit  for  nothing  but  a  fire-screen,  and  his  landscape 

^  [On  this  subject,  see  Vol.  V.  pp.  115-116^  and  the  note  on  p.  116  there.] 
'  [Compare  Vol.  XVII.  pp.  340,  341.] 


272 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


distances   like  the  furniture  of  a   Noah's  Ark  from  the 
nearest  toy-shop.    Whereas  Holman  Hunt,  in  the  very  be 
ginning  of  his  career,  fixed  his  mind,  as  a  colourist,  on  th( 
true  representation  of  actual  sunshine,  of  growing  leafage 
of  living  rock,  of  heavenlj^  cloud ;  and  his  long  and  resolutt 
exile,  deeply  on  many  grounds  to  be  regretted  both  foi, 
himself  and  us,  bound  only  closer  to  his  heart  the  might} 
forms  and  hues  of  God's  earth  and  sky,  and  the  mysterie 
of  its  appointed  lights  of  the   day  and  of  the  night- 
opening  on  the  foam — "  Of  desolate  seas,  in — Sacred— land., 
forlorn."^  j 
8.  You  have,  for  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years,  been  ac 
customed  to  see  among  the  pictures  principally  characteristi' 
of  the  English  school,  a  certain  average  number  of  attentiv* 
studies,  both  of  sunshine,  and  the  forms  of  lower  nature 
whose  beauty  is  meant  to  be  seen  by  its  light.    Those  o 
Mr.  Brett  may  be  named  with  especial  praise;^  and  yoi 
probably  will  many  of  you  remember  with  pleasure  th> 
study  of  cattle  on  a  Highland  moor  in  the  evening  by  Mi 
Davis,  which  in  last  year's  Academy  carried  us  out,  at  th( 
end  of  the  first  room,  into  sudden  solitude  among  the  hills 
But  we  forget,  in  the  enjoyment  of  these  new  and  health; 
pleasures  connected  with  pamting,  to  whom  we  first  ow 
them  all.    The  apparently  unimportant  picture  by  Holman 
Hunt,  "The  Strayed  Sheep,"  which — painted  thirty  year 
ago* — you  may  perhaps  have  seen  last  autumn  in  the  room 
of  the  [Fine]  Art  Society  in  Bond  Street,  at  once  achieve" 
all  that  can  ever  be  done  in  that  kind :  it  will  not  be  sur 
passed — it  is  little  likely  to  be  rivalled — by  the  best  effort 
of  the  times  to  come.    It  showed  to  us,  for  the  first  time  i; 
the  history  of  art,  the  absolutely  faithful  balances  of  colou 

*  [Keats,  Ode  to  a  Nightingale: 

magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam  J 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lauds  forlorn."] 

*  [For  Ruskin's  praise  of  Brett's  landscapes,  see  Academy  Notes,  Vol.  XIV 
pp.  234,  etc.  (Index,  p.  314).] 

"  [There  was  no  picture  by  H.  W.  B.  Davis,  R.A.,  in  the  first  room  in  tb 
exhibition  of  1882  ;  in  the  second  room  was  his  picture  entitled     In  Ross-shire."i 

*  [Exhibited  1853 :  see  Vol.  XIV.  pp.  65,  226.J 


L  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  273 


id  shade  by  which  actual  sunshine  might  be  transposed 
to  a  key  in  which  the  harmonies  possible  with  material 
gments  should  yet  produce  the  same  impressions  upon 
ie  mind  which  were  caused  by  the  light  itself. 

9.  And  remember,  all  previous  work  whatever  had  been 
ther  subdued  into  narrow  truth,  or  only  by  convention 
iggestive  of  the  greater.  Claude's  sunshine  is  colourless, 
-only  the  golden  haze  of  a  quiet  afternoon ;  ^ — so  also  that 

Cuyp :  Turner's,  so  bold  in  conventionalism  that  it  is 
ledible  to  few  of  you,  and  offensive  to  many.  But  the 
lire  natural  green  and  tufted  gold  of  the  herbage  in  the 
)llow  of  that  little  sea-cliff*  must  be  recognized  for  true 
arely  by  a  minute's  pause  of  attention.  Standing  long 
fore  the  picture,  you  were  soothed  by  it,  and  raised  into 
ch  peace  as  you  are  intended  to  find  in  the  glory  and 
e  stillness  of  summer,  possessing  all  things. 

10.  I  cannot  say  of  this  power  of  true  sunshine  the 
ist  thing  that  I  would.  Often  it  is  said  to  me  by  kindly 
aders,  that  I  have  taught  them  to  see  what  they  had 
j>t  seen :  and  yet  never — in  all  the  many  volumes  of  effort 
ihave  I  been  able  to  tell  them  my  own  feelings  about 
laat  I  myself  see.    You  may  suppose  that  I  have  been 

!  this  time  trying  to  express  my  personal  feelings  about 
ature.  No ;  not  a  whit.  I  soon  found  I  could  not,  and 
d  not  try  to.  All  my  writing  is  only  the  effort  to  dis- 
iguish  what  is  constantly,  and  to  all  men,  lovable,  and 
they  will  look,  lovely,  from  what  is  vile  or  empty, — 
,  to  well-trained  eyes  and  hearts,  loathsome; — but  you 
ill  never  find  me  talking  about  what  /  feel,  or  what  / 
ink.^  I  know  that  fresh  air  is  more  wholesome  than 
!g,  and  that  blue  sky  is  more  beautiful  than  black,  to 
;;ople  happily  born  and  bred.  But  you  will  never  find, 
|:cept  of  late,  and  for  special  reasons,  effort  of  mine  to 

^  [Compare  Modern  Painters^  vol.  i.  (Vol.  III.  p.  184) :  Claude  "  set  the  sun  in 
liven";  and  vol.  v.  (Vol.  VII.  p.  410):  "Claude  and  Cuyp  had  painted  the  sun- 
\ne;  Turner  alone,  the  sun  colour."^ 

\  2  [Compare  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  43  (Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  107),  and  the  Preface 
I  Prceterita.l 

XXXIII.  S 


274  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


say  how  I  am  myself  oppressed  or  comforted  by  such 
things.^ 

11.  This  is  partly  my  steady  principle,  and  partly  it  is] 
incapacity.  Forms  of  personal  feeling  in  this  kind  can  only  j 
be  expressed  in  poetry;  and  I  am  not  a  poet,  nor  in  anyj 
articulate  manner  could  I  the  least  explain  to  you  what  a  < 
deep  element  of  life,  for  me,  is  in  the  sight  merely  of  pure 
sunshine  on  a  bank  of  living  grass. 

More  than  any  pathetic  music, — yet  I  love  music,— 
more  than  any  artful  colour — and  yet  I  love  colour, — more 
than  other  merely  material  thing  visible  to  these  old  eyes,! 
in  earth  or  sky.  It  is  so,  I  believe,  with  many  of  you| 
also, — with  many  more  than  know  it  of  themselves ;  and 
this  picture,  were  it  only  the  first  that  cast  true  sunshine 
on  the  grass,  would  have  been  in  that  virtue  sacred :  but 
in  its  deeper  meaning,  it  is,  actually,  the  first  of  Hunt'sj 
sacred  paintings — the  first  in  which,  for  those  who  can  read, 
the  substance  of  the  conviction  and  the  teaching  of  his  after 
life  is  written,  though  not  distinctly  told  till  afterwards  in| 
the  symbolic  picture  of  "  The  Scapegoat."  ^  "  All  we  like 
sheep  have  gone  astray,  we  have  turned  every  one  to  his 
own  way,  and  the  Lord  hath  laid  on  Him  the  iniquity  of 
us  all."^ 

12.  None  of  you,  who  have  the  least  acquaintance  witi] 
the  general  tenor  of  my  own  teaching,  will  suspect  in 
me  any  bias  towards  the  doctrine  of  vicarious  Sacrifice,  aj 
it  is  taught  by  the  modern  Evangelical  Preacher.  But  the 
great  mystery  of  the  idea  of  Sacrifice  itself,  which  has  beer 
manifested  as  one  united  and  solemn  instinct  by  all  thought- 
ful and  affectionate  races,  since  the  wide  world  became 
peopled,  is  founded  on  the  secret  truth  of  benevolent  energ} 
which  all  men  who  have  tried  to  gain  it  have  learned-^ 

^  [Here  Ruskin  is  thinking  of  such  passages  in  Fors  as  those  in  which  h( 
describes  the  interruptions  of  his  work  by  noises,  etc.  {e.g.,  Vol.  XX VII.  p.  328) 
and  of  his  accounts  of  "  The  Storm-Cloud "  and  its  elFect  on  the  art  of  the  time 
In  this  latter  connexion^  see  below,  pp.  400-406 ;  and  compare  The  Storm-Cloui 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  §  85  (Vol.  XXXIV.  pp.  77-78).] 

2  [See  Academy  Notes,  1856:  Vol.  XIV.  pp.  61,  267.] 

3  [Isaiah  liii.  6.] 


I.  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  275 


at  you  cannot  save  men  from  death  but  by  facing  it 
r  them,  nor  from  sin  but  by  resisting  it  for  them.  It  is, 
1  the  contrary,  the  favourite,  and  the  worst  falsehood  of 
odern  infidel  morality,  that  you  serve  your  fellow-creatures 
ist  by  getting  a  percentage  out  of  their  pockets,  and  will 
^st  provide  for  starving  multitudes  by  regaling  yourselves. 
)me  day  or  other — probably  now  very  soon — too  probably 
^  heavy  afflictions  of  the  State,  we  shall  be  taught  that 

is  not  so ;  and  that  all  the  true  good  and  glory  even 
'  this  world — not  to  speak  of  any  that  is  to  come,  must 
i  bought  still,  as  it  always  has  been,  with  our  toil,  and 
ith  our  tears.  That  is  the  final  doctrine,  the  inevitable 
le,  not  of  Christianity  only,  but  of  all  Heroic  Faith  and 
eroic  Being;  and  the  first  trial  questions  of  a  true  soul 

itself  must  always  be, — Have  I  a  religion,  have  I  a 
luntry,  have  I  a  love,  that  I  am  ready  to  die  for?^ 

13.  That  is  the  Doctrine  of  Sacrifice ;  the  faith  in  which 
aac  was  bound,  in  which  Iphigenia  died,  in  which  the 
eat  army  of  martyrs  have  suffered,  and  by  which  all 
ctories  in  the  cause  of  justice  and  happiness  have  been 
iined  by  the  men  who  became  more  than  conquerors 
rough  Him  that  loved  them.^ 

And  yet  there  is  a  deeper  and  stranger  sacrifice  in  the 
stem  of  this  creation  than  theirs.  To  resolute  self-denial, 
d  to  adopted  and  accepted  suffering,  the  reward  is  in 
e  conscience  sure,  and  in  the  gradual  advance  and  pre- 
minance  of  good,  practically  and  to  all  men  visible.  But 
liat  shall  we  say  of  involuntary  suffering, — the  misery  of 
le  poor  and  the  simple,  the  agony  of  the  helpless  and 
le  innocent,  and  the  perishing,  as  it  seems  in  vain,  and 
le  mother  weeping  for  the  children  of  whom  she  knows 
ily  that  they  are  not?^ 

14.  I  saw  it  lately  given  as  one  of  the  incontrovert- 
ile  discoveries  of  modern  science,  that  all  our  present 

^  [Compare  Unto  this  Last,  §§  21,  22,  where  Ruskin  makes  the  same  question 
:j'  test  of  the  nobility  of  a  profession  (Vol.  XVII.  p.  40).] 
I  *  [Romans  viii.  37-] 

'  [Jeremiah  xxxi.  15.] 


276 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


enjoyments  were  only  the  outcome  of  an  infinite  series  oi 
pain.  I  do  not  know  how  far  the  statement  fairly  repre-i 
sented — but  it  announced  as  incapable  of  contradiction — thi^ 
melancholy  theory.  If  such  a  doctrine  is  indeed  abroac 
among  you,  let  me  comfort  some,  at  least,  with  its  absolutt 
denial.  That  in  past  aeons  the  pain  suffered  throughout  th(* 
living  universe  passes  calculation,  is  true ;  that  it  is  infinite 
is  untrue;  and  that  all  our  enjoyments  are  based  on  it 
contemptibly  untrue.  For,  on  the  other  hand,  the  pleasure 
felt  through  the  living  universe  during  past  ages  is  incal 
culable  also,  and  in  higher  magnitudes.  Our  own  talents] 
enjoyments,  and  prosperities,  are  the  outcome  of  that  happij 
ness  with  its  energies,  not  of  the  death  that  ended  them 
So  manifestly  is  this  so,  that  all  men  of  hitherto  wides 
reach  in  natural  science  and  logical  thought  have  been  Ic 
to  fix  their  minds  only  on  the  innumerable  paths  of  pleaj 
sure,  and  ideals  of  beauty,  which  are  traced  on  the  scrol 
of  creation,  and  are  no  more  tempted  to  arraign  as  unjustj 
or  even  lament  as  unfortunate,  the  essential  equivalent  o! 
sorrow,  than  in  the  sevenfold  glories  of  sunrise  to  depre 
cate  the  mingling  of  shadow  with  its  light. 

15.  This,  however,  though  it  has  always  been  the  senti 
ment  of  the  healthiest  natural  philosophy,  has  never,  a 
you  well  know,  been  the  doctrine  of  Christianity.  Tha 
religion,  as  it  comes  to  us  with  the  promise  of  a  kingdor 
in  which  there  shall  be  no  more  Death,  neither  sorrow  nc 
crying,^  so  it  has  always  brought  with  it  the  confession  c 
calamity  to  be  at  present  in  patience  of  mystery  enduredi 
and  not  by  us  only,  but  apparently  for  our  sakes,  by  th 
lower  creatures,  for  whom  it  is  inconceivable  that  any  goo 
should  be  the  final  goal  of  ill.^  Towards  these,  the  on 
lesson  we  have  to  learn  is  that  of  pity.^  For  all  huma 
loss  and  pain,  there  is  no  comfort,  no  interpretation  wort 
a  thought,  except  only  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection 

i 

*  [Revelation  xxi.  4.] 

^  [Tennyson^  In  Memoriam,  liv.] 

3  [Compare  Fors  Ctavigera,  Letter  92  (Vol.  XXIX.  pp.  453-454).] 


I.  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  277 


'  which  doctrine,  remember,  it  is  an  immutable  historical 
ct  that  all  the  beautiful  work,  and  all  the  happy  existence 
f  mankind,  hitherto,  has  depended  on,  or  consisted  in,  the 
ope  of  it.^ 

16.  The  picture  of  which  I  came  to-day  chiefly  to  speak ,^ 
5  a  symbol  of  that  doctrine,  was  incomplete  when  I  saw 
,  and  is  so  still ;  but  enough  was  done  to  constitute  it  the 
lost  important  work  of  Hunt's  life,  as  yet ;  and  if  health 
granted  to  him  for  its  completion,  it  will,  both  in  reality 
rid  in  esteem,  be  the  greatest  religious  painting  of  our  time. 

You  know  that  in  the  most  beautiful  former  conceptions 

the  Flight  into  Egypt,  the  Holy  Family  were  always  re- 
-esented  as  watched  over,  and  ministered  to,  by  attendant 
igels.  But  only  the  safety  and  peace  of  the  Divine  Child 
id  its  mother  are  thought  of.  No  sadness  or  wonder  of 
leditation  returns  to  the  desolate  homes  of  Bethlehem. 

But  in  this  English  picture  all  the  story  of  the  escape, 
;  of  the  flight,  is  told,  in  fulness  of  peace,  and  yet  of 
Dmpassion.  The  travel  is  in  the  dead  of  the  night,  the 
ay  unseen  and  unknown; — but,  partly  stooping  from  the 
arlight,  and  partly  floating  on  the  desert  mirage,  move, 
ith  the  Holy  Family,  the  glorified  souls  of  the  Innocents, 
lear  in  celestial  light,  and  gathered  into  child-garlands  of 
ladness,  they  look  to  the  Child  in  whom  they  live,  and 
for  them  to  die.  Waters  of  the  River  of  Life  flow 
3fore  on  the  sands :  the  Christ  stretches  out  His  arms  to 
le  nearest  of  them ; — leaning  from  His  mother's  breast. 

^  [Compare,  above,  p.  101  ;  Lectures  on  Art,  §  151  (Vol.  XX.  p.  143) ;  and  Fiction, 
lir  and  Foul,  §  45  (Vol.  XXXIV,).] 

^  [^^The  Triumph  of  the  Innocents."  What  Ruskin  saw  was  the  first  picture, 
lich  the  painter  afterwards  abandoned  owing  to  defects  in  the  canvas.  The 
isign  was  afterwards  repeated  on  a  larger  canvas,  and  the  completed  picture  was 
hibited  at  the  Fine  Art  Society's  rooms  in  1885  ;  it  is  now  in  the  possession  of 
r.  J.  T.  Middlemore,  M.P.,  of  Birmingham.  The  relinquished  painting  was  at  a 
ter  date  finished,  and  is  in  the  Walker  Art  Gallery  at  Liverpool.  See  Cata- 
jue  of  an  Exhibition  of  the  Collected  Works  of  W.  Holman  Hunt,  with  a  Prefatory 
ote  by  Sir  W.  B.  Richmond,  1906  ;  and  the  artist's  Pre-Raphaelitism  and  the  Pre- 
aphaelite  Brotherhood,  vol.  ii.  ch.  xii.,  where  (on  pp.  341-342)  he  quotes  §§  16,  17 

Ruskin's  lecture.  The  Plate  here  given  (XXXIII.)  is  from  the  picture  at 
verpool.  The  original  study  of  the  picture,  painted  in  the  East,  is  in  the 
)ssession  of  Mrs.  Sydney  Morse.] 


278 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


To  how  many  bereaved  households  may  not  this  happy 

vision  of  conquered  death  bring,  in  the  future,  days  of  i 

peace !  i 

17.  I  do  not  care  to  speak  of  other  virtues  in  this  ^ 
design  than  those  of  its  majestic  thought, — but  you  may  i 
well  imagine  for  yourselves  how  the  painter's  quite  separate'  'i 
and,  in  its  skill,  better  than  magical,  power  of  giving!  ^ 
effects  of  intense  light,  has  aided  the  effort  of  his  imagi-j  \ 
nation,  while  the  passion  of  his  subject  has  developed  in  ! 
him  a  swift  grace  of  invention  which  for  my  own  part  i 
I  never  recognized  in  his  design  till  now.  I  can  say  with  t 
deliberation  that  none  even  of  the  most  animated  groups  1 
and  processions  of  children  which  constitute  the  loveliest^  i 
sculpture  of  the  Robbias  and  Donatello,  can  more  thanj 
rival  the  freedom  and  felicity  of  motion,  or  the  subtletyij  i 
of  harmonious  line,  in  the  happy  wreath  of  these  angel-1  1 
children. 

18.  Of  this  picture  I  came  to-day  chiefly  to  speak,  no: 
will  I  disturb  the  poor  impression  which  my  words  carl  i 
give  you  of  it  by  any  immediate  reference  to  other  picturesj  \ 
by  our  leading  masters.  But  it  is  not,  of  course,  among  ij 
these  men  of  splendid  and  isolated  imagination  that  yoi'  i 
can  learn  the  modes  of  regarding  common  and  familial  r 
nature  which  you  must  be  content  to  be  governed  by — ir  i| 
early  lessons.  I  count  myself  fortunate,  in  renewing  mj:  i 
effort  to  systematize  these,  that  I  can  now  place  in  th(  i] 
schools,  or  at  least  lend,  first  one  and  then  another,  somd,  i 
exemplary  drawings  by  young  people — youths  and  girls  o|  i 
your  own  age — clever  ones,  yes, — but  not  cleverer  than  <'i  t 
great  many  of  you : — eminent  only,  among  the  youn^:j  i 
people  of  the  present  day  whom  I  chance  to  knowj  \ 
in  being  extremely  old-fashioned  ; — and, — don't  be  spitefuj  \ 
when  1  say  so, — but  really  they  all  are,  all  the  four  o;  ^ 
them — two  lads  and  two  lassies  ^ — quite  provokingly  good.  i 

^  [Signer  Boni  and  Signer  Alessandri  (see  below,  p.  286  n.) ;  Miss  Francesc 
Alexander  and  Miss  Lilian  Trotter.  For  drawings  by  G.  Boni,  see  the  Index  to  th 
Oxford  Collection,  Vol.  XXI.  p.  320 ;  for  Signor  Alessandri,  Vol.  XXX.] 


1.  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  279 


19.  Lads,  not  exactly  lads  perhaps — one  of  them  is 
[ready  master  of  the  works  in  the  ducal  palace  at  Venice ; 
Lssies,  to  an  old  man  of  sixty-four,  who  is  vexed  to  be 
eaten  by  them  in  his  own  business — a  little  older,  perhaps, 
lari  most  of  the  lassies  here,  but  still  brightly  young;  and, 
lind  you,  not  artists,  but  drawing  in  the  joy  of  their 
earts — and  the  builder  at  Venice  only  in  his  pla3dime — 
et,  I  believe  you  will  find  these,  and  the  other  drawings 

speak  of,  more  helpful,  and  as  I  just  said,  exemplary, 
lan  any  I  have  yet  been  able  to  find  for  you ;  and  of 
lese,  little  stories  are  to  be  told,  which  bear  much  on 
J  that  I  have  been  most  earnestly  trying  to  make  you 
isured  of,  both  in  art  and  in  real  life. 

20.  Let  me,  however,  before  going  farther,  say,  to  relieve 
)ur  minds  from  unhappily  too  well-grounded  panic,  that 
have  no  intention  of  making  my  art  lectures  any  more 
le-half  sermons.  All  the  pieces  of  theological  or  other 
rave  talk  which  seemed  to  me  a  necessary  part  of  my 
jaehing  here,  have  been  already  spoken,  and  printed ;  ^  and 
re,  I  only  fear  at  too  great  length,  legible.  Nor  have  I 
ly  more  either  strength  or  passion  to  spare  in  matters 
ipable  of  dispute.  I  must  in  silent  resignation  leave  all 
c  you  who  are  led  by  your  fancy,  or  induced  by  the 
shion  of  the  time,  to  follow,  without  remonstrance  on  my 
irt,  those  modes  of  studying  organic  beauty  for  which 
reparation  must  be  made  by  depriving  the  animal  under 
ivestigation  first  of  its  soul  within,  and  secondly  of  its 
dn  without.  But  it  chances  to-day  that  the  merely  literal 
istories  of  the  drawings  which  I  bring  with  me  to  show 
3U  or  to  lend,  do  carry  with  them  certain  evidences  of 
le  practical  force  of  religious  feeling  on  the  imagination, 
3th  in  artists  and  races,  such  as  I  cannot,  if  I  would, 
ralook,  and  such  as  I  think  you  will  yourselves,  even 
lose  who  have  least  sympathy  with  them,  not  without 
Imiration  recognize. 

^  [See,  for  instance,  Lectures  on  Art  (Vol.  XX.  pp.  70-72)  and  Eaglets  Nest 
ol.  XXn.  p.  287).] 


280 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


21.  For  a  long  time  I  used  to  say,  in  all  my  elementary 
books,  that,  except  in  a  graceful  and  minor  way,  wonieni 
could  not  paint  or  draw.^  I  am  beginning,  lately,  to  bowi  ' 
myself  to  the  much  more  delightful  conviction  that  nobody  ^ 
else  can.  How  this  very  serious  change  of  mind  was  firstl  ^ 
induced  in  me  it  is,  if  not  necessary,  I  hope  pardonable,  to  ^ 
delay  you  by  telling.  i 

When  I  was  at  Venice  in  1876 — it  is  almost  the  onlyi 
thing  that  makes  me  now  content  in  having  gone  there,— 

two  English  ladies,  mother  and  daughter,  were  staying  at  ^ 
the  same  hotel,  the  Europa.    One  day  the  mother  sent  me 

a  pretty  little  note  asking  if  I  would  look  at  the  young  ^ 

lady's  drawings.  On  my  somewhat  sulky  permission,  ^' 
few  were  sent,  in  which  I  saw  there  was  extremely  right-j 

minded  and  careful  work,  almost  totally  without  knowledge.)  f 
I  sent  back  a  request  that  the  young  lady  might  be  allowedl 

to  come  out  sketching  with  me.     I  took  her  over  into  the,  ^ 

pretty  cloister  of  the  church  of  La  Salute,  and  set  her,1  i 

for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  to  draw  a  little  piece  of  greyl  t 

marble  with  the  sun  upon  it,  rightly.  She  may  have  had|  i 
one  lesson,  after  that — she  may  have  had  two;  the  three^ 

if  there  were  three,  seem  to  me,  now,  to  have  been  only  I 

one !    She  seemed  to  learn  everything  the  instant  she  was  } 

shown  it — and  ever  so  much  more  than  she  was  taught^j  * 

Next  year  she  went  away  to  Norway,  on  one  of  these  i 

frolics  which   are   now-a-days  necessary  to  girl-existence  i 

and  brought  back  a  little  pocket-book,  which  she  thought  im 

nothing  of,  and  which  I  begged  of  her:  and  have  framed'  «, 

half  a  dozen  leaves  of  it  (for  a  loan  to  you,  only,  mind,'  ii 

till  you  have  enough  copied  them.^  ii 

22.  Of  the  minute  drawings  themselves,  I  need  not  teli  i 
you — for  you  will  in  examining  them,  beyond  all  telling  ! 
feel,  that  they  are  exactly  what  we  should  all  like  to  bf  ii 
able  to  do;  and  in  the  plainest  and  frankest  manner  shoM  ii 

1  [See  Vol.  XIV.  p.  308  and  n.] 

^  [These  sketches  by .  Miss  Lilian  Trotter  remain,  however,  in  the  "  Loiii 
Cabinet"  in  the  Ruskin  Drawing  School  at  Oxford  :  see  Vol.  XXI.  p.  306.] 


1.  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  281 


s  how  to  do  it — or,  more  modestly  speaking,  how,  if 
eaven  help  us,  it  can  be  done.  They  can  only  be  seen, 
s  you  see  Bewick  Vignettes,  with  a  magnifying  glass,  and 
bey  are  patterns  to  you  therefore  only  of  pocket-book  work ; 
ut  what  skill  is  more  precious  to  a  traveller  than  that  of 
linute,  instantaneous,  and  unerring  record  of  the  things 
lat  are  precisely  best?  For  in  this,  the  vignettes  upon 
lese  leaves  differ,  widely  as  the  arc  of  heaven,  from  the 
itter  truths  of  Bewick.  Nothing  is  recorded  here  but 
hat  is  lovely  and  honourable:  how  much  there  is  of  both 
1  the  peasant  life  of  Norway,  many  an  English  traveller 
as  recognized;  but  not  always  looking  for  the  cause  or 
iduring  the  conclusion,  that  its  serene  beauty,  its  hospitable 
atriotism,  its  peaceful  courage,  and  its  happy  virtue,  were 
ependent  on  facts  little  resembling  our  modern  English 
istitutions ; — namely,  that  the  Norwegian  peasant  "  is  a 
ee  man  on  a  scanty  bit  of  ground  which  he  has  inherited 
cm  his  forefathers ;  that  the  Bible  is  to  be  found  in  every 
ut ;  that  the  schoolmaster  wanders  from  farm  to  farm ; 
lat  no  Norwegian  is  confirmed  who  does  not  know  how 
)  read ;  and  no  Norwegian  is  allowed  to  marry  who  has 
ot  been  confirmed."  I  quote  straightforwardly,  (missing 
illy  some  talk  of  Parliaments ;  but  not  caring  otherwise 
ow  far  the  sentences  are  with  my  own  notions,  or  against,) 
om  Dr.  Hartwig's  collected  descriptions  of  the  Polar  world, 
am  not  myself  altogether  sure  of  the  wisdom  of  teaching 
v^erybody  to  read :  but  might  be  otherwise  persuaded  if 
ere,  as  in  Norway,  every  town  had  its  public  library,  "while 
1  many  districts  the  peasants  annually  contribute  a  dollar 
Dwards  a  collection  of  books,  which,  under  the  care  of  the 
riest,  are  lent  out  to  all  comers."^ 

23.  I  observe  that  the  word  "  priest "  has  of  late  become 
lore  than  ever  offensive  to  the  popular  English  mind ;  and 
ause  only  to  say  that,  in  whatever  capacity,  or  authority, 

^  [The  Polar  World :  a  Popular  Description  of  Man  and  Nature  in  the  Arctic  and 
ntarctic  Regions  of  the  Globe,  1869^  p.  111.  For  a  fuller  quotation  from  the  same 
assage,  see  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  89  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  406).] 


282  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


the  essential  function  of  a  public  librarian  must  in  every  I 

decent  and  rational  country  be  educational;  and  consist  in  | 

the  choosing,  for  the  public,  books  authoritatively  or  essen-i  i 

tially  true,  free  from  vain  speculation  or  evil  suggestion:  ii 

and  in  noble  history  or  cheerful  fancy,  to  the  utmost,  en-  I 

tertaining.  I 

One  kind  of  periodical  literature,  it  seems  to  me  as  I  i 

study  these  drawings,  must  at  all  events  in  Norw^ay  bei  jf 

beautifully  forbidden, — the  Journal  des  Modes,    You  willi  i 

see  evidence  here  that  the  bright  fancying  ahke  of  maidens';  | 

and  matrons'  dress,  capable  of  prettiest  variation  in  its  orna-*  i 

ment,  is  yet  ancestral  in  its  form,  and  the  white  caps,  in  i) 

their  daily  purity,  have  the  untroubled  constancy  of  thei  il 

sea-shell  and  the  snow.  | 

24.  Next  to  these  illustrations  of  Norwegian  economy,]  % 
I  have  brought  you  a  drawing  of  deeper  and  less  imitablej  i 
power:  it  is  by  a  girl  of  quite  peculiar  gift,  whose  life  has?  t\ 
hitherto  been  spent  in  quiet  and  unassuming  devotion  toj  t 
her  art,  and  to  its  subjects.  I  would  fain  have  said,  anj  i 
Enghsh  girl,  but  all  my  prejudices  have  lately  had  the  axe|  f 
laid  to  their  roots ^  one  by  one, — she  is  an  American!  But  i 
for  twenty  years  she  has  lived  with  her  mother  among  the  i 
peasants  of  Tuscany — under  their  olive  avenues  in  summer  | 
— receiving  them,  as  they  choose  to  come  to  chat  with  her,  , 
in  her  little  room  by  Santa  Maria  Novella  in  Florence 
during  winter.  They  come  to  her  as  their  loving  guide,  ^ 
and  friend,  and  sister  in  all  their  work,  and  pleasure,  and  j 
— suffering.    I  lean  on  the  last  word.                              I  i 

25.  For  those  of  you  who  have  entered  into  the  heart  | 
of  modern  Italy  know  that  there  is  probably  no  more  | 
oppressed,  no  more  afflicted  order  of  gracious  and  blessed  ,| 
creatures — God's  own  poor,  who  have  not  yet  received  \ 
their  consolation, — than  the  mountain  peasantry  of  Tus-i  | 
cany  and  Romagna.  What  their  minds  are,  and  what  their  j 
state,  and  what  their  treatment,  those  who  do  not  know 


*  [Matthew  iii.  10.] 


L  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  28a 


^taly  may  best  learn,  if  they  can  bear  the  grief  of  learn- 
ng  it,  from  Ouida's  photographic  story  of  A  Village  Com- 
nune  ;^  yet  amidst  all  this,  the  sweetness  of  their  natural 
haracter  is  undisturbed,  their  ancestral  religious  faith 
inshaken — their  purity  and  simplicity  of  household  life 
mcorrupted.  They  may  perish,  by  our  neglect  or  our 
ruelty,  but  they  cannot  be  degraded.  Among  them,  as  I 
lave  told  you,  this  American  girl  has  lived — from  her 
outh  up,  with  her  (now  widowed)  mother,  who  is  as 
agerly,  and,  which  is  the  chief  matter,  as  sympathizingiy 
>enevolent  as  herself.  The  peculiar  art  gift  of  the  youngei* 
ady  is  rooted  in  this  sympathy,  the  gift  of  truest  expression 
f  feelings  serene  in  their  rightness ;  and  a  love  of  beauty 
-divided  almost  between  the  peasants  and  the  flowers  that 
ive  round  Santa  Maria  del  Fiore.  This  power  she  has 
rained  by  its  limitation,  severe,  and  in  my  experience 
mexampled,  to  work  in  light  and  shade  only,  with  the 
)ure  pen  line :  but  the  total  strength  of  her  intellect  and 
ancy  being  concentrated  in  this  engraver's  method,  it  ex- 
)resses  of  every  subject  what  she  loves  best,  in  simplicity 
j  ndebased  by  any  accessory  of  minor  ernotion.^ 

She  has  thus  drawn  in  faithfuUest  portraiture  of  these 
)easant  Florentines,  the  loveliness  of  the  young  and  the 
aajesty  of  the  aged:  she  has  listened  to  their  legends^ 
/ritten  down  their  sacred  songs ;  and  illustrated,  with  the 
anctities  of  mortal  life,  their  traditions  of  immortality. 

26.  I  have  brought  you  only  one  drawing  to-day;  in 
he  spring  I  trust  you  shall  have  many, — but  this  is  enough, 
ust  now.  It  is  drawn  from  memory  only,  but  the  fond 
aemory  which  is  as  sure  as  sight — it  is  the  last  sleep  from 
v^hich  she  waked  on  this  earth,  of  a  young  Florentine  girl 
v^ho  had  brought  heaven  down  to  earth,  as  truly  as  ever 
aint  of  old,  while  she  lived,  and  of  whom  even  I,  who 
lever  saw  her,  cannot  believe  that  she  is  dead.    Her  friend, 

1  [See  the  Introduction  to  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  xxvi.] 

'  [Compare  the  similar  estimate  of  Miss  Alexander's  work  by  G.  F,  Watts  r 
ol.  XXXII.  p.  XXX.] 


284 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


who  drew  this  memorial  of  her,  wrote  also  the  short  story 
of  her  life,  which  I  trust  you  will  soon  be  able  to  read.^ 

Of  this,  and  of  the  rest  of  these  drawings,  I  have  much  j 
to  say  to   you ;  but  this   first  and  last, — that  they  are 
representations  of  beautiful  human  nature,  such  as  could  i 
only  have  been  found  among  people  living  in  the  pure 
Christian  faith — such  as  it  was,  and  is,  since  the  twelfth 
century ;  and  that,  although,  as  I  said,  I  have  returned  to  ' 
Oxford  only  to  teach  you  technical  things,  this  truth  must 
close  the  first  words,  as  it  must  be  the  sum  of  all  that 
I  may  be  permitted  to  speak  to  you, — that  the  history  of 
the  art  of  the  Greeks  is  the  eulogy  of  their  virtues ;  and  \ 
the  history  of  Art  after  the  fall  of  Greece,  is  that  of  the 
Obedience  and  the  Faith  of  Christianity.  , 

27.  There  are  two  points  of  practical  importance  which 
I  must  leave  under  your  consideration.    I  am  confirmed  by 
Mr.  Macdonald  in  my  feeling  that  some  kind  of  accurately 
testing  examination  is  necessary  to  give  consistency  and  ^ 
efficiency  to  the  present  drawing-school.    I  have  therefore) 
determined  to  give  simple  certificates  of  merit,  annually,  to! 
the  students  who  have  both  passed  through  the  required 
course,  and  at  the  end  of  three  years  have  produced  work 
satisfactory  to  Mr.  Macdonald  and  myself.^    After  Easter, 
I  will  at  once  look  over  such  drawings  as  Mr.  Macdonald 
thinks  well  to  show  me,  by  students  who  have  till  now 
complied  with  the  rules  of  the  school ;  and  give  certifi- 
cates accordingly; — henceforward,  if  my  health  is  spared, 
annually :  and  I  trust  that  the  advantage  of  this  simple 

*  See  the  frontispiece  to  The  Story  of  Ida,  by  "  Francesca."    G.  Allen, 
1883.    [Vol.  XXXII.  p.  3.] 


^  [For  Ruskin's  Professorial  Notice  on  this  subject,  see  Vol.  XXI.  p.  316.  j 
The  terms  of  the  Notice  were  not  long  enforced.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  first  I 
lecture  of  his  next  course,  Ruskin  remarked  that  "this  ^modest  ordinance,'  having 
had  the  effect  of  emptying  the  school  of  its  former  pupils,  and  not  having  tempted 
new  scholars,  is  now  to  be  withdrawn,  and  the  young  ladies  of  Oxford  are  oncei 
more  to  be  admitted  to  'copy  Turner  in  their  own  way.'  'As  for  the  under- i 
graduates,  it  will  make  no  difference,  for  I  never  succeeded  in  getting  more  than! 
two  or  %\\rQ%  of  them  into  my  school,  even  in  its  palmiest  days'"  {Pall  Mall\ 
Gazette,  October  20,  1884).] 


I.  REALISTIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  285 


nd  uncompetitive  examination  will  be  felt  by  succeeding 
olders  of  the  Slade  Professorship,  and  in  time  commend 
:self  enough  to  be  held  as  a  part  of  the  examination 
ystem  of  the  University. 

Uncompetitive,  always.    The  drawing  certificate  will  imply 

0  compliment,  and  convey  no  distinction.  It  will  mean 
lerely  that  the  student  who  obtains  it  knows  perspective, 
7ith  the  scientific  laws  of  light  and  colour  in  illustrating 
3rm,  and  has  attained  a  certain  proficiency  in  the  manage- 
lent  of  the  pencil. 

28.  The  second  point  is  of  more  importance  and  more 
lifficulty. 

I  now  see  my  way  to  making  the  collection  of  examples 

1  the  schools,  quite  representative  of  all  that  such  a  series 
ught  to  be.  But  there  is  extreme  difficulty  in  finding  any 
jQoks  that  can  be  put  into  the  hands  of  the  home  student 
^hich  may  supply  the  place  of  an  academy.  I  do  not 
aean  merely  as  lessons  in  drawing,  but  in  the  formation 
>f  taste,  which,  when  we  analyse  it,  means  of  course  merely 
he  right  direction  of  feeling. 

29.  I  hope  that  in  many  English  households  there  may 
*e  found  already — I  trust  some  day  there  may  be  found 
Ivrherever  there  are  children  who  can  enjoy  them,  and  espe- 
ially  in  country  village  schools — the  three  series  of  designs 
)y  Ludwig  Richter,  in  illustration  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  of 
he  Sunday,  and  of  the  Seasons.^  Perfect  as  types  of  easy 
ine  drawing,  exquisite  in  ornamental  composition,  and  re- 
ined to  the  utmost  in  ideal  grace,  they  represent  all  that 
s  simplest,  purest,  and  happiest  in  human  life,  all  that  is 
nost  strengthening  and  comforting  in  nature  and  in  religion. 
They  are  enough,  in  themselves,  to  show  that  whatever 
ts  errors,  whatever  its  backslidings,  this  century  of  ours  has 
n  its  heart  understood  and  fostered,  more  than  any  former 
me,  the  joys  of  family  affection,  and  of  household  piety. 

^  [Two  of  the  designs  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  Series  are  reproduced  in  Vol.  XXIX. 
see  pp.  594,  595),  and  another  is  given  below  (p.  300).  For  notes  on  the  Sunday 
ind  the  Seasons,  see  Vol.  XXX.  pp.  349-351.] 


286 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


For  the  former  fairy  of  the  woods,  Richter  has  brought 
to  you  the  angel  on  the  threshold ;  for  the  former  promises 
of  distant  Paradise,  he  has  brought  the  perpetual  blessing, 
**God  be  with  you":  amidst  all  the  turmoil  and  speeding 
to  and  fro,  and  wandering  of  heart  and  eyes  which  perplex 
our  paths,  and  betray  our  wills,  he  speaks  to  us  in  unfaihng ' 
memorial  of  the  message — "My  Peace  I  leave  with  you."^ 

^  [John  xiv.  27.  "  At  the  end  of  his  lecture/'  says  a  report  in  the  *S'^  James's 
Budget  (see  above^  p.  259),  "  Mr.  Ruskin  committed  himself  to  a  somewhat 
perilous  statement.  He  had  found  two  young  Italian  artists,  in  whom  the  true 
spirit  of  old  Italian  art  yet  lived.  No  hand  like  theirs  had  been  put  to  paper  since 
Lippi  and  Leonardo.  Mr.  Ruskin  concluded  by  showing  two  sketches  of  his  own, 
harmonious  in  colour  and  faithful  and  tender  in  touch,  of  Italian  architecture, 
taken  from  the  Duomo  of  Lucca,  to  show  that  though  he  was  growing  older  his 
liand  had  not  lost  its  steadiness."  For  the  "two  young  Italian  artists,"  see  above, 
p.  278  n. ;  and  for  the  drawings  of  Lucca,  above,  p.  xlv.] 


I 


LECTURE  II 


MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING 
E.  BURNE-JONES  AND  G.  F.  WATTS 

{Delivered  12th  and  l6th  May  1883) 

).  It  is  my  purpose,  in  the  lectures  I  may  be  permitted 
eneeforward  to  give  in  Oxford,  so  to  arrange  them  as  to 
spense  with  notes  in  subsequent  printing;  and,  if  I  am 
reed  for  shortness,  or  in  oversight,  to  leave  anything 
sufficiently  explained,  to  complete  the  passage  in  the  next 
llowing  lecture,  or  in  any  one,  though  after  an  inter- 
al,  which  may  naturally  recur  to  the  subject.  Thus  the 
rinted  text  will  always  be  simply  what  I  have  read,  or 
id ;  and  the  lectures  will  be  more  closely  and  easily  con- 
acted  than  if  I  went  always  on  without  the  care  of 
^planatory  retrospect. 

31.  It  may  have  been  observed,  and  perhaps  with  ques- 
on  of  my  meaning,  by  some  readers,  that  in  my  last 
cture  I  used  the  word  materialistic "  of  the  method  of 
mception  common  to  Rossetti  and  Hunt,  with  the  greater 
umber  of  their  scholars.  I  used  that  expression  to  denote 
leir  peculiar  tendency  to  feel  and  illustrate  the  relation  of 
)iritual  creatures  to  the  substance  and  conditions  of  the 
isible  world ;  more  especially,  the  familiar,  or  in  a  sort 
umihating,  accidents  or  employments  of  their  earthly  life; 
-as,  for  instance,  in  the  picture  I  referred  to,  Rossetti's 
irgin  in  the  house  of  St.  John,  the  Madonna's  being 
rawn  at  the  moment  when  she  rises  to  trim  their  lamp. 

*  Ante,  §  5  [p.  270]. 
287 


288 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


In  many  such  cases,  the  incidents  may  of  course  have  sym- 
bohcal  meaning,  as,  in  the  unfinished  drawing  by  Rossetti 
of  the  Passover,  which  I  have  so  long  left  with  you,^  the] 
boy  Christ  is  watching  the  blood  struck  on  the  doorpost;-—' 
but  the  peculiar  value  and  character  of  the  treatment  isi 
in  what  I  called  its  material  veracity,  compelling  the  spec- J 
tator's  behef,  if  he  have  the  instinct  of  behef  in  him  at  all, 
in  the  thing's  having  verily  happened ;  and  not  being  a  mere 
poetical  fancy.    If  the  spectator,  on  the  contrary,  have  no 
capacity  of  belief  in  him,  the  use  of  such  representation  is' 
in  making  him  detect  his  own  incredulity ;  and  recognize, 
that  in  his  former  dreamy  acceptance  of  the  story,  he  had 
never  really  asked  himself  whether  these  things  were  so. 

32.  Thus,  in  what  I  believe  to  have  been  in  actual  time 
the  first — though  I  do  not  claim  for  it  the  slightest  lead 
in  suggestive  influence,  yet  the  first  dated  example  of  such 
literal  and  close  realization — my  own  endeavour  in  the  third 
volume  of  Modern  Painters  (iv.  4,  §  16)^  to  describe  the 
incidents  preceding  the  charge  to  Peter,  I  have  fastened | 
on  the  words,  He  girt  his  fisher's  coat  about  him,  and 
did  cast  himself  into  the  sea,"^  following  them  out  with. 
"  Then  to  Peter,  all  wet  and  shivering,  staring  at  Christ 
in  the  sun;''  not  in  the  least  supposing  or  intending  an} 
symbolism  either  in  the  coat  or  the  dripping  water,  or  tht 
mornnig  sunshine;  but  merely  and  straitly  striving  to  put 
the  facts  before  the  readers'  eyes  as  positively  as  if  he  had 
seen  the  thing  come  to  pass  on  Brighton  beach,  and  an 
English  fisherman  dash  through  the  surf  of  it  to  the  feet 
of  his  captain — once  dead,  and  now  with  the  morning 
brightness  on  his  face. 

33.  And  you  will  observe  farther,  that  this  way  o\ 

^  [Plate  XXXIV.  The  drawing  was  commissioned  by  Ruskin  in  1854,  but  nevei 
completed  by  the  artist  (see,  in  a  later  volume,  several  references  to  it  in  Ruskin  • 
letters  to  Rossetti).  The  drawing  was  shown  at  the  Old  Masters  Exhibition  o 
1883,  No.  864.  It  was  at  that  time  in  the  Ruskin  Drawing  School,  but  is  uom 
at  Brantwood.  For  another  reference  to  the  drawing,  see  The  Three  Colours  (h 
Pre-liaphaelitism,  §  22  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

2  [See  Vol.  V.  pp.  80,  81.] 

^  [John  xxi.  7.] 


XXXIV 


Tlie  Passover 


1 


II.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  289 


linking  about  a  thing  compels,  with  a  painter,  also  a 
3rtain  way  of  painting  it.  I  do  not  mean  a  necessarily 
ose  or  minute  way,  but  a  necessarily  complete,  substantial, 
id  emphatic  one.  The  thing  may  be  expressed  with  a 
w  fierce  dashes  of  the  pencil;  but  it  will  be  wholly  and 
idily  there ;  it  may  be  in  the  broadest  and  simplest  terms, 
it  nothing  will  be  hazy  or  hidden,  nothing  clouded  round, 
•  melted  away:  and  all  that  is  told  will  be  as  explanatory 
id  lucid  as  may  be — as  of  a  thing  examined  in  daylight, 
)t  dreamt  of  in  moonlight. 

34.  I  must  delay  you  a  little,  though  perhaps  tiresomely, 
V  make  myself  well  understood  on  this  point;  for  the  first 
ilebrated  pictures  of  the  pre-Raphaelite  school  having  been 
ctremely  minute  in  finish,  you  might  easily  take  minute- 
])ss  for  a  speciality  of  the  style, — but  it  is  not  so  in  the 
last.  Minuteness  I  do  somewhat  claim,  for  a  quality  in- 
cited upon  by  myself,  and  required  in  the  work  of  my 
(/n  pupils;  it  is — at  least  in  landscape — Turnerian  and 

Qskinian — not  pre-Raphaelite  at  all :— the  pre-Raphaelism 
ommon  to  us  all  is  in  the  frankness  and  honesty  of  the 
luch,  not  in  its  dimensions. 

35.  I  think  I  may,  once  for  all,  explain  this  to  you, 
^d  convince  you  of  it,  by  asking  you,  when  you  next  go 
I)  to  London,  to  look  at  a  sketch  by  Vandyke  in  the 
Jitional  Gallery,  No.  680,  purporting  to  represent  this  very 
5  me  I  have  been  speaking  of, — the  miraculous  draught 
(  fishes.  It  is  one  of  the  too  numerous  brown  sketches 
i|  the  manner  of  the  Flemish  School,  which  seem  to  me 
j|ways  rather  done  for  the  sake  of  wiping  the  brush  clean 
tan  of  painting  anything.  There  is  no  colour  in  it,  and 
i»  light  and  shade; — but  a  certain  quantity  of  bitumen  is 
ibbed  about  so  as  to  slip  more  or  less  greasily  into  the 
5 ape  of  figures;  and  one  of  St.  John's  (or  St.  James's) 
l?s  is  suddenly  terminated  by  a  wriggle  of  white  across 
i  to  signify  that  he  is  standing  in  the  sea.  Now  that 
ns  the  kind  of  work  of  the  Dutch  School,  which  I  spent 
s  many  pages  in  vituperating  throughout  the  first  volume 

XXXIII.  T 


290 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


of  Modern  Painters^ — pages,  seemingly,  vain  to  this  day 
for  still,  the  brown  daubs  are  hung  in  the  best  rooms  c 

the  National  Gallery,  and  the  loveliest  Turner  drawing  i 

are  nailed  to  the  wall  of  its  cellar,'^ — and  might  as  well  b  II 

buried  at  Pompeii  for  any  use  they  are  to  the  British  |li 

public; — but,  vain  or  effectless  as  the  said  chapters  ma,  i 

be,  they  are  altogether  true  in  that  firm  statement,  tha  ^ 

these  brown  flourishes  of  the  Dutch  brush  are  by  me;|  I 

who  lived,  virtually,  the  gentle,  at  court, — the  simple,  i  jft 

the  pothouse :  and  could  indeed  paint,  according  to  theil  i 

habitation,  a  nobleman  or  a  boor;  but  were  not  only  incaj  I 

able  of  conceiving,  but  wholly  un wishful  to  conceive,  any  1 

thing,  natural  or  supernatural,  beyond  the  precincts  of  th  Ei 

Presence  and  the  tavern.    So  that  they  especially  failed  i,  \ 

giving  the  life  and  beauty  of  little  things  in  lower  natur^  ■\i 

and  if,  by  good  hap,  they  may  sometimes  more  or  less  su(i  « 

ceed  in  painting  St.  Peter  the  Fisher's  face,  never  by  an  itl 

chance  realize  for  you  the  green  wave  dashing  over  his  feC  j  if 

36.  Now,  therefore,  understand  of  the  opposite  so  calle'  t 

^*  Pre-Raphaelite,"  and,  much  more,  pre-Rubensite,  societ}  pi 

that  its  primary  virtue  is  the  trying  to  conceive  things  f  il 

they  are,  and  thinking  and  feeling  them  quite  out :  ^ — b(  r 

lieving  joyfully  if  we  may,  doubting  bravely,  if  we  must,-  \\ 

but  never  mystifying,  or  shrinking  from,  or  choosing  fc  if 

argument's  sake,  this  or  that  fact;  but  giving  every  fa(  | 

its  own  full  power,  and  every  incident  and  accessory  ii  t 

own  true   place, — so   that,   still   keeping  to   our  illustn  ?il 

tions  from  Brighton  or   Yarmouth   beach,  in  that  mo5  t 

noble  picture  by  Millais  which  probably  most  of  you  sa"  ^ii 

last  autumn  in   London,  the   "Caller  Herrin,"  —  pictui  | 

which,  as  a  piece  of  art,  I  should  myself  put  highest  c  ^ 

all  yet  produced  by  the  Pre-Raphaelite  school; — in  thi  \ 
most  noble  picture,  I  say,  the  herrings  were  painted  jui 

1  [See,  for  instance,  in  this  edition,  Vol.  III.  pp.  90,  188-189,  516.]! 

2  Compare,  below,  p.  371  and  w.] 

^  [Compare  the  similar  definitions  in  Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Paintin  i| 

Vol.  XII.  pp.  146,  157  n.  ;  also  in  Vol.  XII.  p.  322  ;  and  in  The  Three  Colours  i 
Pre-Baphaelitism,  §  9  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 


! 


II.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  291 


t  well  as  the  girl,  and  the  master  was  not  the  least  afraid 
lat,  for  all  he  could  do  to  them,  you  would  look  at  the 
I  rrings  first.^ 

37.  Now  then,  I  think  I  have  got  the  manner  of  Pre- 
Japhaelite  "  Realization  "  —  "  Verification  "  —  "  Materializa- 
im" — or  whatever  else  you  choose  to  call  it,  positively 
( ough  asserted  and  defined :  and  hence  you  will  see  that 
i  follows,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  that  Pre-Raphaelite 
objects  must  usually  be  of  real  persons  in  a  solid  world — 
i»t  of  personifications  in  a  vaporescent  one. 

The  persons  may  be  spiritual,  but  they  are  individual, 
-St.  George,  himself,  not  the  vague  idea  of  Fortitude; 
I .  Cecily  herself,  not  the  mere  power  of  music.  And, 
i:hough  spiritual,  there  is  no  attempt  whatever  made  by 
1  is  school  to  indicate  their  immortal  nature  by  any  evanes- 
<|nce  or  obscurity  of  aspect.  All  transparent  ghosts  and 
noutlined  spectra  are  the  work  of  failing  imagination, — 
]st  you  sure  of  that.  Botticelli  indeed  paints  the  Favonian 
]eeze  transparent,^  but  never  the  Angel  Gabriel;  and  in 
ie  picture  I  was  telling  you  of  in  last  lecture,^ — if  there 
i  a  fault  which  may  jar  for  a  moment  on  your  feelings 
hen  you  first  see  it,  I  am  afraid  it  will  be  that  the  souls 
<  the  Innocents  are  a  little  too  chubby,  and  one  or  two 
I  them,  I  should  say,  just  a  dimple  too  fat. 

38.  And  here  I  must  branch  for  a  moment  from  the 
<rect  course  of  my  subject,  to  answer  another  question 
hich  may  by  this  time  have  occurred  to  some  of  my 
]jarers,  how,  if  this  school  be  so  obstinately  realistic,  it 
in  also  be  characterized  as  romantic. 

When  we  have  concluded  our  review  of  the  present 
ate  of  English  art,  we  will  collect  the  general  evidence 
'  its  romance;^  meantime,  I  will  say  only  this  much,  for 

*  A?ile,  §  16,  seq.  [pp.  277,  278]. 

^  ["Caller  Herrin' "  v/as  exhibited  at  the  Fine  Art  Society's  rooms  in  1882; 
is  now  in  Mr.  Walter  Dunlop's  possession.] 

2  [In  his  "  Primavera/'  in  the  Accademia  at  Florence.    For  "  Favonian  breeze," 
3  Horace,  Odes,  i.  4,  1.] 
^  [See  below,  p.  374.] 


292 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


you  to  think  out  at  your  leisure,  that  romance  does  n( 
consist  in  the  manner  of  representing  or  relating  thing 
but  in  the  kind  of  passions  appealed  to  by  the  things  r< 
lated.  The  three  romantic  passions  are  those  by  which  yo 
are  told,  in  Wordsworth's  aphoristic  line,  that  the  life  ( 
the  soul  is  fed : — 

"We  live  by  Admiration,  Hope,  and  Love."^ 

Admiration,  meaning  primarily  all  the  forms  of  Hei 
Worship,  and  secondarily,  the  kind  of  feeling  towards  tl 
beauty  of  nature,  which  I  have  attempted  too  feebly  t 
analyze  in  the  second  volume  of  Modeim  Painters ; — Hop* 
meaning  primarily  the  habit  of  mind  in  which  we  take  pn 
sent  pain  for  the  sake  of  future  pleasure,  and  expandin 
into  the  hope  of  another  world ; — and  Love,  meaning  ( 
course  whatever  is  happiest  or  noblest  in  the  life  either  ( 
that  world  or  this. 

39.  Indicating,  thus  briefly,  what,  though  not  alwaj^ 
consciously,  we  mean  by  Romance,  I  proceed  with  oij 
present  subject  of  inquiry,  from  which  I  branched 
the  point  where  it  had  been  observed  that  the  realistic 
school  could  only  develop  its  complete  force  in  represeni 
ing  persons,  and  could  not  happily  rest  in  personification 
Nevertheless,  we  find  one  of  the  artists  whose  close  frienc 
ship  with  Rossetti,  and  fellowship  with  other  members  ( 
the  Pre-Raphaelite  brotherhood,  have  more  or  less  identifie 
his  work  with  theirs,  yet  differing  from  them  all  diametr 
cally  in  this,  that  his  essential  gift  and  habit  of  thougKi 
is  in  personification,  and  that, — for  sharp  and  brief  irj 
stance, — had  both  Rossetti  and  he  been  set  to  illustra^j 
the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  Rossetti  would  have  painte 
either  Adam  or  Eve ;  but  Edward  Burne-Jones,  a  Day  ^ 
Creation.  ■ 

And  in  this  gift,  he  becomes  a  painter,  neither  of  Divin' 
History,  nor  of  Divine  Natural  History,  but  of  Mytholog}! 

*  [Excursion,  Book  iv. — a  line  often  quoted  by  Ruskin  :  e.g.^  in  Vol.  I^'' 
p.  29  n. ;  and  see  General  Index.] 


II.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  293 


jcepted  as  such,  and  understood  by  its  symbolic  figures  to 
]  present  only  general  truths,  or  abstract  ideas. 

40.  And  here  I  must  at  once  pray  you,  as  I  have 
j  ayed  you  to  remove  all  associations  of  falsehood  from  the 
ord  romance,  so  also  to  clear  them  out  of  your  faith, 
hen  you  begin  the  study  of  mythology.    Never  confuse  a 
yth  with  a  lie,^ — nay,  you  must  even  be  cautious  how 

ir  you  even  permit  it  to  be  called  a  fable.  Take  the 
j^quentest  and  simplest  of  myths  for  instance — that  of 
^Drtune  and  her  wheel.^  Enid  does  not  herself  conceive, 
r  in  the  least  intend  the  hearers  of  her  song  to  conceive, 
iat  there  stands  anywhere  in  the  universe  a  real  woman, 
irning  an  adamantine  wheel  whose  revolutions  have  power 
rer  human  destiny.  She  means  only  to  assert,  under  that 
iiage,  more  clearly  the  law  of  Heaven's  continual  dealing 
th  man, — "He  hath  put  down  the  mighty  from  their 
J  at,  and  hath  exalted  the  humble  and  meek."^ 

41.  But  in  the  imagined  symbol,*  or  rather  let  me  say, 
i  e  visiting  and  visible  dream,  of  this  law,  other  ideas 
iriously  conducive  to  its  clearness  are  gathered; — those 
<  gradual  and  irresistible  motion  of  rise  and  fall, — the  tide 
\  Fortune,  as  distinguished  from  instant  change  or  catas- 
iaphe; — ^those  of  the  connection  of  the  fates  of  men  with 
(  ch  other,  the  yielding  and  occupation  of  high  place,  the 
j'ernately  appointed  and  inevitable  humiliation: — and  the 
]stening,  in  the  sight  of  the  Ruler  of  Destiny,  of  all  to 
ie  mighty  axle  which  moves  only  as  the  axle  of  the 
orld.  These  things  are  told  or  hinted  to  you,  in  the 
lythic  picture,  not  with  the  impertinence  and  the  narrow- 
ijss  of  words,  nor  in  any  order  compelling  a  monotonous 
:iccession  of  thought, — but  each  as  you  choose  or  chance 

■  read  it,  to  be  rested  in,  or  proceeded  with,  as  you  will. 

42.  Here  then  is  the  ground  on  which  the  Dramatic, 

^  [Compare  the  opening  passage  of  Queen  of  the  Air,  Vol.  XIX.  pp.  295  seq.] 
"  [For  other  references  to  the  myth  (embodied  in  the  song  of  Enid  in  Idylls  of 

■  J^ing),  see  Vol.  XVII.  pp.  101,  223.] 
"  [Luke  i.  52.] 

*  [The  large  picture  "The  Wheel  of  Fortune."  exhibited  at  the  Grosvenor 
:  1883.] 


294  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 

or  personal,  and  Mythic,  or  personifying,  schools  of  on 
young  painters,  whether  we  find  for  them  a  general  nam* 

or  not,  must  be  thought  of  as  absolutely  one — that,  as  th'  ' 

dramatic  painters  seek  to  show  you  the  substantial  tnitl  ^ 

of  persons,  so  the  mythic  school  seeks  to  teach  you  th«  ij 
spiritual  truth  of  myths. 

Truth  is  the  vital  power  of  the  entire  school, — Truth  it 

armour — Truth  its  war- word;  and  the  grotesque  and  mU  is 

forms  of  imagination  which,  at  first  sight,  seem  to  be  thi  ^ 

reaction  of  a  desperate  fancy,  and  a  terrified  faith,  against  i 

the  incisive  scepticism  of  recent  science,  so  far  from  bein[  I 

so,  are  a  part  of  that  science  itself :  they  are  the  result  ' 

of  infinitely  more  accurate  scholarship,  of  infinitely  men!  t 

detective  examination,  of  infinitely  more  just  and  scrupui  t 

lous  integrity  of  thought,  than  was  possible  to  any  artisj  i 

during  the  two  preceding  centuries ;  and  exactly  as  thJ  i 

eager  and  sympathetic  passion  of  the  dramatic  designer  no\i  I 

assures  you  of  the  way  in  which  an  event  happened,  s*]  i 

the  scholarly  and  sympathetic  thought  of  the  mythic  designej  | 

now  assures  you  of  the  meaning,  in  what  a  fable  said.      i  i 

43.  Much  attention  has  lately  been  paid  by  archgeolo  f 
gists  to  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  the  development  c  I 
myths :  but,  for  the  most  part,  with  these  two  erroneou  i 
ideas  to  begin  with — the  first,  that  mythology  is  a  tempd  I 
rary  form  of  human  folly,  from  which  they  are  about  i)  i 
their  own  perfect  wisdom  to  achieve  our  final  deliverance*  i| 
the  second,  that  you  may  conclusively  ascertain  the  natur  1 
of  these  much-to-be-lamented  misapprehensions,  by  the  typej  i 
which  early  art  presents  of  them !  You  will  find  in  th  I 
first  section  of  my  Queen  of  the  Air,^  contradiction  enougli  i 
of  the  first  supercilious  theory ; — though  not  with  enougl 
clearness  the  counter  statement,  that  the  thoughts  of  all  th  |  i 
greatest  and  wisest  men  hitherto,  since  the  world  was  made:  j 
have  been  expressed  through  mythology.                         I  j 

44.  You  may  find  a  piece  of  most  convincing  evidencj 
on  this  point  by  noticing  that  whenever,  by  Plato,  you  ai'i  i 

1  [See  Vol.  XIX.  pp.  295-296.]  i 


II.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  295 


(  tricated  from  the  play  of  logic,  and  from  the  debate  of 
jdnts  dubitable  or  trivial;  and  are  to  be  told  somewhat 
(  his  inner  thought,  and  highest  moral  conviction, — that 
istant  you  are  cast  free  in  the  elements  of  phantasy,  and 
(  lighted  by  a  beautiful  myth/  And  I  believe  that  every 
1  aster  here  who  is  interested,  not  merely  in  the  history, 
lit  in  the  substance,  of  moral  philosophy,  will  confirm  me 
i  saying  that  the  direct  maxims  of  the  greatest  sages  of 
(reece  do  not,  in  the  sum  of  them,  contain  a  code  of 
(hies  either  so  pure,  or  so  practical,  as  that  which  may 
]i  gathered  by  the  attentive  interpretation  of  the  myths 
(  Pindar  and  Aristophanes.^ 

45.  Of  the  folly  of  the  second  notion  above-named,  held 
]  the  majority  of  our  students  of  ''development"  in  fable, 
-  that  they  can  estimate  the  dignity  of  ideas  by  the  sym- 
I'ls  used  for  them,  in  early  art,  and  trace  the  succession 
(  thought  in  the  human  mind  by  the  tradition  of  orna- 
lent  in  its  manufactures,  I  have  no  time  to-day  to  give 
jiy  farther  illustration  than  that  long  since  instanced  to 
^)u,^  the  difference  between  the  ideas  conveyed  by  Homer's 
( scription  of  the  shield  of  Achilles,  (much  more,  Hesiod's 
<  that  of  Herakles,)  and  the  impression  which  we  should 
iceive  from  any  actually  contemporary  Greek  art.  You 
lay  with  confidence  receive  the  restoration  of  the  Homeric 
:ield,  given  by  Mr.  A.  Murray  in  his  history  of  Greek 
!  ulpture,*  as  authoritatively  representing  the  utmost  graphic 
I  ill  which  could  at  the  time  have  been  employed  in  the 
i^coration  of  a  hero's  armour.  But  the  poet  describes  the 
lide  imagery  as  producing  the  effect  of  reality,  and  might 
'aise  in  the  same  words  the  sculpture  of  Donatello  or 

*  [As,  for  instance,  in  the  figure  of  the  charioteer  of  the  soul  referred  to  by 
iskin  in  Vol.  XX.  p.  351 ;  and  in  the  "  lovely  metaphor  of  the  cave,"  Vol.  XXII. 
627.] 

^  [For  such  interpretation  by  Ruskin,  see — for  Pindar,  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  514, 
il.  XIX.  p.  316,  Vol.  XX.  pp.  328-329  ;  for  Aristophanes,  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  398, 
ol.  XX.  p.  401,  Vol.  XXV.  p.  542.] 

^  [In  the  second  course  of  Oxford  lectures,  1870  :  see  Aratra  Pentdici,  §  78 
ol.  XX.  p.  250).] 

*  [A  History  of  Greek  Sculpture^  by  A.  S.  Murray,  vol.  i.  ch.  iii.  ("  The  Shield 
Achilles").] 


296 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


Ghiberti.  And  you  may  rest  entirely  satisfied  that  whei 
the  surrounding  realities  are  beautiful,  the  imaginations,  ii 
all  distinguished  human  intellect,  are  beautiful  also,  an( 
that  the  forms  of  gods  and  heroes  were  entirely  noble  ii 
dream,  and  in  contemplation,  long  before  the  clay  becanK 
ductile  to  the  hand  of  the  potter,  or  the  likeness  of  I 
living  body  possible  in  ivory  and  gold. 

46.  And  herein  you  see  with  what  a  deeply  interesting 
function  the  modern  painter  of  mythology  is  invested.  H( 
is  to  place,  at  the  service  of  former  imagination,  the  aril 
which  it  had  not — and  to  realize  for  us,  with  a  truth  theri 
impossible,  the  visions  described  by  the  wisest  of  men  a? 
embodying  their  most  pious  thoughts  and  their  most  exaltec 
doctrines :  not  indeed  attempting  with  any  literal  exactitud( 
to  follow  the  words  of  the  visionary,  for  no  man  can  ente: 
literally  into  the  mind  of  another,  neither  can  any  great 
designer  refuse  to  obey  the  suggestions  of  his  own:  bu1 
only  bringing  the  resources  of  accomplished  art  to  unvei 
the  hidden  splendour  of  old  imagination  ;  and  showing  m 
that  the  forms  of  gods  and  angels  which  appeared  in  fanc} 
to  the  prophets  and  saints  of  antiquity,  were  indeed  mort 
natural  and  beautiful  than  the  black  and  red  shadows  on  i 
Greek  vase,  or  the  dogmatic  outlines  of  a  Byzantine  fresco 

47.  It  should  be  a  ground  of  just  pride  to  all  of 
here  in  Oxford,  that  out  of  this  University^  came  the  paintei 
whose  indefatigable  scholarship  and  exhaustless  fancy  have 
together  fitted  him  for  this  task,  in  a  degree  far  distinguish 
ing  him  above  all  contemporary  European  designers.  It  \i 
impossible  for  the  general  public  to  estimate  the  quantity! 
of  careful  and  investigatory  reading,  and  the  fine  tact  of 
literary  discrimination,  which  are  signified  by  the  commandij 
now  possessed  by  Mr.  Burne- Jones  over  the  entire  range] 
both  of  Northern  and  Greek  Mythology,  or  the  tenderness; 
at  once,  and  largeness,  of  sympathy  which  have  enabled  him> 
to  harmonize  these  with  the  loveliest  traditions  of  Christian| 

I! 

^  [Burne- Jones  matriculated  at  Oxford,  1852  ;  undergraduate  of  Exeter  Collegey 
1853-1856;  honorary  D.C.L.,  1881  ;  honorary  Fellow  of  Exeter  College,  1882.] 


II.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  297 

3gend.    Hitherto,  there  has  been  adversity  between  the 
^hools  of  classic  and  Christian  art,  only  in  part  conquered 
y  the  most  liberal-minded  of  artists  and  poets ;  Nicholas 
f  Pisa  accepts  indeed  the  technical  aid  of  antiquity,  but 
dth  much  loss  to  his  Christian  sentiment ;  Dante  uses  the 
nagery  of  JEschylus  for  the  more  terrible  picturing  of  the 
[ell  to  which,  in  common  with  the  theologians  of  his  age, 
e  condemned  his  instructor;  but  while   Minos  and  the 
'uries  are  represented  by  him  as  still  existent  in  Hades,^ 
iiere  is  no  place  in  Paradise  for  Diana  or  Athena.  Con- 
ariwise,  the  later  revival  of  the  legends  of  antiquity  meant 
3orn  of  those  of  Christendom.    It  is  but  fifty  years  ago 
lat  the  value  of  the  latter  was  again  perceived  and  repre- 
inted  to  us  by  Lord  Lindsay  :  ^  and  it  is  only  within  the 
ine  which  may  be  looked  back  to  by  the  greater  number 
^en  of  my  younger  auditors,  that  the  transition  of  Athe- 
an  mythology,  through  Byzantine,  into  Christian,  has  been 
;st  felt,  and  then  traced  and  proved,  by  the  penetrative 
;holarship  of  the  men  belonging  to  this  Pre-Raphaelite 
hool,  chiefly  Mr.  Burne- Jones  and  Mr.  William  Morris, — 
^ble  coUaborateurs,  of  whom,  may  I  be  forgiven,  in  pass- 
g,  for  betraying  to  you  a  pretty  little  sacredness  of  their 
ivate  life, — that  they  solemnly  and  jovially  have  break- 
sted  together  every  Sunday,  for  many  and  many  a  year.^ 
48.  Thus  far,  then,  I  am  able  with  security  to  allege  to 
)u  the  peculiar  function  of  this  greatly  gifted  and  highly 
ained  English  painter ;  and  with  security  also,  the  function 
any  noble  myth,  in  the  teaching,  even  of  this  practical 
id  positive  British  race.    But  now,  when  for  purposes  of 

^  [It  is  Virgil  whom  Dante  follows,  rather  than  JEschylus,  of  v^hom  he  probably 
d  no  knowledge,  and  whose  name  he  never  mentions.  To  Minos  Dante  assigns 
|2  office  of  judge  at  the  entrance  of  Hell  {Inf.,  v.  4  seq.)^  in  imitation  of  Virgil 
fn.,  vi.  432-433).    He  places  the  Furies  as  guardians  of  the  entrance  to  the  City 

Dis  {Inf.,  ix.  36-42) :  compare  JEn.,  vi.  554-555.] 

2  [Compare  Eagle's  Nest,  §  46  (Vol.  XXH.  p.  155).] 

^  ['^ '  When  we  came  to  live  at  the  Grange,  and  by  this  removal  were  so  much 
i;her  from  Morris  in  Queen  Square/  Edward's  notes  say,  'I  wrote  and  proposed 
it  he  and  Webb  should  come  every  Sunday,  to  bind  us  together,  and  I  remember, 
t  have  lost,  a  letter  he  wrote  in  answer,  more  full  of  warm  response  to  this  than 

often  permitted  himself"  :  see,  further,  Memorials  of  Edward  Bwne-Jones,  vol.  ii. 
5,  200.] 


298 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


direct  criticism  I  proceed  to  ask  farther  in  what  manner  or 
with  what  precision  of  art  any  given  myth  should  be  pre- 
sented— instantly  we  find  ourselves  involved  in  a  group  of 
questions  and  difficulties  which  I  feel  to  be  quite  beyond 
the  proper  sphere  of  this  Professorship.  So  long  as  we 
have  only  to  deal  with  living  creatures,  or  solid  substances, 
I  am  able  to  tell  you — and  to  show — that  they  are  to  be 
painted  under  certain  optical  laws  which  prevail  in  our 
present  atmosphere ;  and  with  due  respect  to  laws  of 
gravity  and  movement  which  cannot  be  evaded  in  our 
terrestrial  constitution.  But  when  we  have  only  an  idea  to 
paint,  or  a  symbol,  I  do  not  feel  authorized  to  insist  any 
longer  upon  these  vulgar  appearances,  or  mortal  and  tem- 
poral limitations.  1  cannot  arrogantly  or  demonstratively 
define  to  you  how  the  light  should  fall  on  the  two  sides 
of  the  nose  of  a  Day  of  Creation ;  ^  nor  obstinately  demand 
botanical  accuracy  in  the  graining  of  the  wood  employed 
for  the  spokes  of  a  Wheel  of  Fortune.  Indeed,  so  far 
from  feeling  justified  in  any  such  vexatious  and  vulgar 
requirements,  I  am  under  an  instinctive  impression  that 
some  kind  of  strangeness  or  quaintness,  or  even  violation 
of  probability,  would  be  not  merely  admissible,  but  ever 
desirable,  in  the  delineation  of  a  figure  intended  neither  tc 
represent  a  body,  nor  a  spirit,  neither  an  animal,  nor  ? 
vegetable,  but  only  an  idea,  or  an  aphorism.  Let  me. 
hov/ever,  before  venturing  one  step  forward  amidst  the  in- 
secure snows  and  cloudy  wreaths  of  the  Imagination,  secure 
your  confidence  in  my  guidance,  so  far  as  I  may  gain  it 
by  the  assertion  of  one  general  rule  of  proper  safeguard 
that  no  mystery  or  majesty  of  intention  can  be  alleged 
by  a  painter  to  justify  him  in  careless  or  erroneous  draw 
ing  of  any  object — so  far  as  he  chooses  to  represent  it  a1 
all.    The  more  licence  we  grant  to  the  audacity  of  hii 

^  ["The  Days  of  Creation,"  six  panels^,  with  angels  holding  globes,  on  each  o 
which  is  represented  a  different  phase  of  the  creation  ;  water-colour,  1876  ;  in  tin 
collection  of  Sir  A.  Henderson  at  Buscot.  The  pictures  were  exhibited  at  th( 
Grosvenor  Gallery,  1877,  and  alluded  to  by  Ruskin  at  the  time  (see  Vol.  XXIX 
pp.  159-160).  Plate  XXXV.  here  is  from  a  pencil-study  at  Oxford  (Reference  Series 
140) :  Vol.  XXI.  p.  40  ] 


CO 


0 

c6 


o 


71 


1 


ir.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  299 


conception,  the  more  careful  he  should  be  to  give  us  no 
causeless  ground  of  complaint  or  offence:  while,  in  the 
degree  of  importance  and  didactic  value  which  he  attaches 
to  his  parable,  will  be  the  strictness  of  his  duty  to  allow 
no  faults,  by  any  care  avoidable,  to  disturb  the  spectator's 
attention,  or  provoke  his  criticism. 

49.  I  cannot  but  to  this  day  remember,  partly  with 
amusement,  partly  in  vexed  humiliation,  the  simplicity  with 
which  I  brought  out,  one  evening  when  the  sculptor  Maro- 
chetti  was  dining  with  us  at  Denmark  Hill,  some  of  the 
then  but  little  known  drawings  of  Rossetti,  for  his  in- 
struction in  the  beauties  of  Pre-Raphaelitism. 

You  may  see  with  the  slightest  glance  at  the  statue  of 
Coeur  de  Lion,^  (the  only  really  interesting  piece  of  historical 
sculpture  we  have  hitherto  given  to  our  City  populace,) 
that  Marochetti  was  not  only  trained  to  perfectness  of 
knowledge  and  perception  in  the  structure  of  the  human 
body,  but  had  also  peculiar  delight  in  the  harmonies  of 
line  which  express  its  easy  and  powerful  motion.  Know- 
ing a  little  more,  both  of  men  and  things,  now,  than  I  did 
on  the  evening  in  question,  I  too  clearly  apprehend  that 
the  violently  variegated  segments  and  angular  anatomies  of 
Lancelot  and  Guenevere  at  the  grave  of  King  Arthur^ 
must  have  produced  on  the  bronze-minded  sculptor  simply 
the  effect  of  a  knave  of  Clubs  and  Queen  of  Diamonds ; 
and  that  the  Italian  master,  in  his  polite  confession  of 
inability  to  recognize  the  virtues  of  Rossetti,  cannot  but 
have  greatly  suspected  the  sincerity  of  his  entertainer,  in 
the  profession  of  sympathy  with  his  own. 

50.  No  faults,  then,  that  we  can  help, — this  we  lay 
down  for  certain  law  to  start  with  ;  therefore,  especially,  no 
ignoble  faults,  of  mere  measurement,  proportion,  perspective, 
and  the  like,  may  be  allowed  to  art  which  is  by  claim 

^  [For  a  similar  reference  to  this  statue  (in  Old  Palace  Yard),  see  Lectures  on 
Architecture  and  Painting,  §  130  n.  (Vol.  XII.  p.  155  n.).] 

[This  water-colour  drawing  (1855)  was  bought  by  Ruskin  in  that  year,  but 
afterwards  given  awjiy  by  him,  as  Rossetti  "  had  scratched  out  the  eyes "  :  see 
(in  a  later  volume  of  this  edition)  a  letter  to  him  from  Ruskin.] 


300 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


learned  and  magistral ;  therefore  bound  to  be,  in  terms, 
grammatical.  And  yet  we  are  not  only  to  allow,  but  even 
to  accept  gratefully,  any  kind  of  strangeness  and  deliberate 
difference  from  merely  realistic  painting,  which  may  raise 
the  work,  not  only  above  vulgarity,  but  above  incredulity. 
For  it  is  often  by  realizing  it  most  positively  that  we 
shall  render  it  least  credible. 

51.  For  instance,  in  the  prettiest  design  of  the  series,  by 
Richter,  illustrating  the  Lord's  Prayer,  which  I  asked  you 
in  my  last  lecture^  to  use  for  household  lessons; — that  of 
the  mother  giving  her  young  children  their  dinner  in  the 
field  which  their  father  is  sowing^ — one  of  the  pieces  of 
the  enclosing  arabesque  represents  a  little  winged  cherub 
emergent  from  a  flower,  holding  out  a  pitcher  to  a  bee,  who 
stoops  to  drink.  The  species  of  bee  is  not  scientifically 
determinable ;  the  wings  of  the  tiny  servitor  terminate  rather  i, 
in  petals  than  plumes;  and  the  unpretentious  jug  suggests 
nothing  of  the  clay  of  Dresden,  Sevres,  or  Chelsea.  You  ! 
would  not,  I  think,  find  your  children  understand  the  lesson 

in  divinity  better,  or  believe  it  more  frankly,  if  the  hymen- 
opterous  insect  were  painted  so  accurately  that,  (to  use 
the  old  method  of  eulogium  on  painting,^)  you  could  hear 
it  buzz  ;  and  the  cherub  completed  into  the  living  likeness  I  | 
of  a  little  boy  with  blue  eyes  and  red  cheeks,  but  of  the 
size  of  a  humming-bird.  In  this  and  in  myriads  of  similar 
cases,  it  is  possible  to  imagine  from  an  outline  what  a  finished 
picture  would  only  provoke  us  to  deny  in  contempt. 

52.  Again,  in  my  opening  lecture  on  Light  and  Shade, 
the  sixth  of  those  given  in  the  year  1870,*  I  traced  in  some 
completeness  the  range  of  ideas  which  a  Greek  vase-painter 
was  in  the  habit  of  conveying  by  the  mere  opposition  of 
dark  and  light  in  the  figures  and  background,  with  the 
occasional  use  of  a  modifying  purple.    It  has  always  been 

^  [See  above,  p.  285.] 

2      Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread"  :  Plate  XXXVl.  here.] 
'  [See  Ruskiu's  references  to  such  method  of  eulogium  in  Vol.  I.  p.  268  ;  Vol.  III. 
p.  166 ;  and  Vol.  V.  p.  35.] 

*  [See  Lectures  on  Art  (Vol.  XX.  pp.  138  seq.).] 


I 


I 


II.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  301 


iiatter  of  surprise  to  me  that  the  Greeks  rested  in  colours 
0  severe,  and  I  have  in  several  places  formerly  ventured 

0  state  my  conviction  that  their  sense  of  colour  was  in- 
srior  to  that  of  other  races.^  Nevertheless,  you  will  find 
hat  the  conceptions  of  moral  and  physical  truth  which 
hey  were  able  with  these  narrow  means  to  convey,  are 
ir  loftier  than  the  utmost  that  can  be  gathered  from  the 
'idescent  delicacy  of  Chinese  design,  or  the  literally  imita- 
ive  dexterities  of  Japan. 

53.  Now,  in  both  these  methods,  Mr.  Burne- Jones  has 
eveloped  their  applicable  powers  to  their  highest  extent, 
lis  outline  is  the  purest  and  quietest  that  is  possible  to 
le  pencil ;  nearly  all  other  masters  accentuate  falsely,  or 

1  some  places,  as  Richter,  add  shadows  which  are  more 
r  less  conventional.  But  an  outline  by  Burne-Jones  is 
s  pure  as  the  lines  of  engraving  on  an  Etruscan  mirror; 
nd  I  placed  the  series  of  drawings  from  the  story  of 
*syche  in  your  school  as  faultlessly  exemplary  in  this  kind.^ 
Vhether  pleasing  or  displeasing  to  your  taste,  they  are 
ntirely  masterful ;  and  it  is  only  by  trying  to  copy  these 
r  other  such  outhnes,  that  you  will  fully  feel  the  grandeur 
f  action  in  the  moving  hand,  tranquil  and  swift  as  a  hawk's 
ight,  and  never  allowing  a  vulgar  tremor,  or  a  momentary 
npulse,  to  impair  its  precision,  or  disturb  its  serenity. 

54.  Again,  though  Mr.  Jones  has  a  sense  of  colour,  in  its 
ind,  perfect,  he  is  essentially  a  chiaroscurist.  Diametrically 
pposed  to  Rossetti,  who  could  conceive  in  colour  only, 
e  prefers  subjects  which  can  be  divested  of  superficial 
ittractiveness ;  appeal  first  to  the  intellect  and  the  heart ; 
!nd  convey  their  lesson  either  through  intricacies  of  deli- 
late  line,  or  in  the  dimness  or  coruscation  of  ominous  light. 

The  heads  of  Medea  and  of  Danae,^  which  I  placed 


^  [The  report  adds — "the  most  precious  things  I  have  next  to  my  Turners." 
he  drawings  are  in  the  Educational  Series  Nos.  64-72  and  223  (see  Vol.  XXI. 
i>.  81,  95,  140.] 

^  [The  head  of  M-dea  is  in  the  drawing  of  ^'The  Two  Wives  of  Jason"  at 
xford  (Vol.  XXI.  p.  300),  reproduced  on  Plate  VII.  in  Vol.  XIX.  The  head  of 
anae  is  No.  224  in  the  Educational  Series  (Vol.  XXI.  p.  95).] 


302 


THE  AKT  OF  ENGLAND 


in  your  schools  long  ago,  are  representative  of  all  thai| 
you  need  aim  at  in  chiaroscuro;  and  lately  a  third  typt 
of  his  best  work,  in  subdued  pencil  light  and  shade,  ha? 
been  placed  within  your  reach  in  Dr.  A  eland's  drawing 
room, — the  portrait  of  Miss  Gladstone,^  in  which  you  wit 
see  the  painter's  best  powers  stimulated  to  their  utmost 
and  reaching  a  serene  depth  of  expression  unattainable 
by  photography,  and  nearly  certain  to  be  lost  in  finishecj 
painting.  : 

55.  For  there  is  this  perpetually  increasing  difficult) 
towards  the  completion  of  any  work,  that  the  added  forces 
of  colour  destroy  the  value  of  the  pale  and  subtle  tintjJ 
or  shades  which  give  the  nobleness  to  expression;  so  thaij 
the  most  powerful  masters  in  oil  painting  rarely  aim  a1 
expression,  but  only  at  general  character:  and  I  believe 
the  great  artist  whose  name  I  have  associated  with  that  o: 
Burne- Jones  as  representing  the  mythic  schools,  Mr.  G.  F 
Watts,  has  been  partly  restrained,  and  partly  oppressed 
by  the  very  earnestness  and  extent  of  the  study  througfc 
which  he  has  sought  to  make  his  work  on  all  sides  per] 
feet.  His  constant  reference  to  the  highest  examples  o: 
Greek  art  in  form,  and  his  sensitiveness  to  the  qualities  ai 
once  of  tenderness  and  breadth  in  pencil  and  chalk  drawing! 
have  virtually  ranked  him  among  the  painters  of  the  greaf 
Athenian  days,  of  whom,  in  the  sixth  book  of  the  Lawi 
Plato  wrote : — "  You  know  how  the  intently  accurate  toi 
of  a  painter  seems  never  to  reach  a  term  that  satisfies  him 
but  he  must  either  farther  touch,  or  soften  the  touche{i| 
laid  already,  and  never  seems  to  reach  a  point  where  hfj 
has  not  yet  some  power  to  do  more,  so  as  to  make  the' 
things  he  has  drawn  more  beautiful,  and  more  apparent 

ACaXX/o)  T6  KOL   (pap€p(joT€pa,"  ^  j 

56.  Of  course  within  the  limits  of  this  lecture  there  k 
no  possibility  of  entering  on  the  description  of  separate^ 
pictures;  but  I  trust  it  may  be  hereafter  my  privilege  tc 

1  [Reproduced  at  p.  86  of  Letters  to  M.  G.  and  H.  G.  by  John  Ruskin,  1903.]  i 

2  [Laws,  vi.  769  B.] 


II.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  303 


(trry  you  back  to  the  beginning  of  English  historical  art, 
hen  Mr.  Watts  first  showed  victorious  powers  of  design 

the  competition  for  the  frescoes  of  the  Houses  of  Par- 
iment^— and  thence  to  trace  for  you,  in  some  complete- 
iss,  the  code  of  mythic  and  heroic  story  which  these  two 
itists,  Mr.  Watts  and  Mr.  Burne- Jones,  have  gathered, 
;id  in  the  most  deep  sense  written,  for  us. 

To-day  I  have  only  brought  with  me  a  few  designs  by 
Burne- Jones,  of  a  kind  which  may  be  to  some  extent 
ell  represented  in  photograph,  and  to  which  I  shall  have 
icasion  to  refer  in  subsequent  lectures.  They  are  not  to 
I  copied,  but  delighted  in,  by  those  of  you  who  care  for 
em, — and,  under  Mr.  Fisher's  care,^  I  shall  recommend 
lem  to  be  kept  out  of  the  way  of  those  who  do  not. 
hey  include  the  Days  of  Creation;  three  outlines  from 
3lomon's  Song ;  ^  two  from  the  Romance  of  the  Rose ; 
e  great  one  of  Athena  inspiring  Humanity ;  and  the 
iory  of  St.  George  and  Sabra.    They  will  be  placed  in 

cabinet  in  the  upper  gallery,  and  will  by  no  means  be 
truded  on  your  attention,  but  made  easily  accessible  to 
)ur  wish. 

57.  To  justify  this  monastic  treatment  of  them,  I  must 
;  y  a  few  words,  in  conclusion,  of  the  dislike  which  these 
osigns,  in  common  with  those  of  Carpaccio,  excite  in  the 
inds  of  most  English  people  of  a  practical  turn.  A  few 
ords  only,  both  because  this  lecture  is  already  long  enough, 
id  besides,  because  the  point  in  question  is  an  extremely 
irious  one,  and  by  no  means  to  be  rightly  given  account 
■  in  a  concluding  sentence.  The  point  is,  that  in  the 
Lse  of  ordinary  painters,  however  peculiar  their  manner, 
^ople  either  like  them,  or  pass  them  by  with  a  merciful 
mtempt  or  condemnation,  calling  them  stupid,  or  weak, 
'  foolish,  but  without  any  expression  of  real  disgust  or 
slike.    But  in  the  case  of  painters  of  the  mythic  schools, 

^  [See  Ruskin's  letter,  written  at  the  time,  in  Vol.  XI.  p.  80  w.] 
^  [The  late  Joseph  Fisher,  for  many  years  Keeper  of  the  University  Galleries.] 
[The  report  adds— the  most  important  myth  in  the  Old  Testament "  :  com- 
re  below,  p.  487.] 


304 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


people  either  greatly  like  them,  or  they  dislike  in  a  sort  c 
frightened  and  angry  way,  as  if  they  had  been  personal! 
aggrieved.    And  the  persons  who  feel  this  antipathy  mos| 
strongly,  are  often  extremely  sensible  and  good,  and  of  th 
kind  one  is  extremely  unwilling  to  offend  ;  but  either  the  i 
are  not  fond  of  art  at  all,  or  else  they  admire,  naturally 
pictures  from  real  life  only,  such  as,  to  name  an  extreme! 
characteristic  example,  those  of  the  Swiss  painter,  Vautiei 
of  whom  I  shall  have  much,  in  another  place,^  to  say  ii, 
praise,  but  of  whom,  with  the  total  school  he  leads,  ! 
must  peremptorily  assure  my  hearers  that  their  manner  c 
painting  is  merely  part  of  our  general  modern  system  o 
scientific  illustration  aided   by  photography,   and   has  n 
claim  to  rank  with  works  of  creative  art  at  all :  and  farthei 
that  it  is  essentially  illiterate,  and  can  teach  you  notliin* 
but  what  you  can  easily  see  without  the  painter's  trouble 
Here,  for  instance,  is  a  very  charming  little  picture  of 
school  girl  going  to  her  class,  and  telling  her  doll  to  b 
good  till  she  comes  back ; — you  like  it,  and  ought  to  lilv 
it,  because  you  see  the  same  kind  of  incident  in  you 
own  children  every  day  ;  but  I  should  say,  on  the  whole 
you  had  better  look  at  the  real  children  than  the  picture 
Whereas,  you  can't  every  day  at  home  see  the  Goddes 
Athena  telling  you  yourselves  to  be  good, — and  perhap 
you  wouldn't  altogether  like  to,  if  you  could. 

58.  Without  venturing  on  the  rudeness  of  hinting  tha 
any  such  feeling  underlies  the  English  dislike  of  didacti 
art,  I  will  pray  you  at  once  to  check  the  habit  of  care| 
lessly  blaming  the  things  that  repel  you  in  early  or  exist 
ing  religious  artists,  and  to  observe,  for  the  sum  of  wha 
is  to  be  noted  respecting  the  four  of  whom  I  have  thujj 
far  ventured  to  speak — Mr.  Rossetti,  Mr.  Hunt,  Mr.  Jonesj 
and  Mr.  Watts, — that  they  are,  in  the  most  solemn  sense 
Hero-worshippers ;  and  that,  whatever  may  be  their  fault 

*  [Ruskin^  however,  did  not  elsewhere  write  of  this  painter,  Benjamin  Vautiei 
(born  at  Morges,  on  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  1829);  examples  of  his  genre  picture 
are  given  in  R.  Muther's  History  of  Modern  Painting^  1896,  vol.  ii.  pp.  263-268.J  i! 


II.  MYTHIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  305 


shortcomings,  their  aim  has  always  been  the  brightest 
d  the  noblest  possible.  The  more  you  can  admire  them, 
d  the  longer  you  read,  the  more  your  minds  and  hearts 
11  be  filled  with  the  best  knowledge  accessible  in  history, 
d  the  loftiest  associations  conveyable  by  the  passionate  and 
/erent  skill,  of  which  I  have  told  you  in  The  Laws  of 
isole,  that  "All  great  Art  is  Praise."^ 

1  [The  title  of  Chapter  I.  in  that  book  :  Vol.  XV.  p.  Sol.  Compare  Fictioriy 
r  and  Foul,  §  42  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 


xxxni.  IT 


LECTURE  III 


CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PALNTING 
SIR  F.  LEIGHTON  AND  ALMA  TADEMA 
(Delivered  igtk  and  23rd  May  1883) 

59.  I  HAD  originally  intended  this  lecture  to  be  merely  th 
exposition,  with  direct  reference  to  painting  and  literature 
of  the  single  line  of  Horace  which  sums  the  conditions  c 
a  gentleman's  education,  be  he  rich  or  poor,  learned  c 
unlearned : 

"  Est  animus  tibi, — sunt  moves  et  lingua, — fidesque/'  ^ 

animus"  being  that  part  of  him  in  which  he  differs  fror 
an  ox  or  an  ape ;  "  mores,"  the  difference  in  him  from  th 

malignum  vulgus";  ''lingua,"  eloquence,  the  power  ( 
expression ;  and  "  fides,"  fidelity,  to  the  Master,  or  Mistres, 
or  Law,  that  he  loves.  But  since  I  came  to  London  an' 
saw  the  exhibitions,  I  have  thought  good  to  address  m 
discourse  more  pertinently  to  what  must  at  this  momei 
chiefly  interest  you  in  them.  And  I  must  at  once,  an. 
before  everything,  tell  you  the  delight  given  me  by  th' 
quite  beautiful  work  in  portraiture,  with  which  my  brothe:| 
professor  Richmond  leads  and  crowns  the  general  splendoij 
of  the  Grosvenor  Gallery.^  I  am  doubly  thankful  that  h| 
release  from  labour  in  Oxford  has  enabled  him  to  develoj 
his  special  powers  so  nobly,  and  that  my  own  return  granl 
me  the  privilege  of  publicly  expressing  to  him  the  admir^ 
tion  we  all  must  feel. 

^  [Epistlesj  i.  1,  57.  For  the  "  maliffrium  vulgus"  {Odes,  ii.  IG,  40),  >^ 
Vol.  XVII.  p.  228.] 

2  [Sir  William  Richmond  exhibited  eight  portraits,  and  also  a  portrait-bust]  i 

306 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  307 


60.  And  now  in  this  following  lecture,  you  must  please 
lerstand  at  once  that  I  use  the  word  "  classic,"  first  in 
own  sense  of  senatorial,  academic,  and  authoritative ;  ^ 
as  a  necessary  consequence  of  that  first  meaning,  also 
the  sense,  more  proper  to  our  immediate  subject,  of 
ti-Gothic ;  antagonist,  that   is  to  say,   to  the  temper 
which   Gothic   architecture   was   built :  and   not  only 
agonist  to  that  form  of  art,  but  contemptuous  of  it ; 
orgiving  to  its  faults,  cold  to  its  enthusiasms,  and  im- 
ent  of  its  absurdities.    In  which  contempt  the  classic 
id  is  certainly  illiberal ;  and  narrower  than  the  mind  of 
equitable  art  student  should  be  in  these  enlightened 
s : — for  instance,  in  the  British  Museum,  it  is  quite  right 
:  the  British  public  should  see  the  Elgin  marbles  to  the 
advantage;  but  not  that  they  should  be  unable  to  see 
example  of  the  sculpture  of  Chartres  or  Wells,  unless 
J  go  to  the  miscellaneous  collection  at  Kensington, 
;re  Gothic  saints  and  sinners  are  confounded  alike  among 
m  thrashing-machines  and  dynamite-proof  ships  of  war ;  ^ 
to  the  Crystal  Palace,  where  they  are  mixed  up  with 
imel's  perfumery.^ 

81.  For  this  hostility,  in  our  present  English  schools, 
^een  the  votaries  of  classic  and  Gothic  art,  there  is  no 
md  in  past  history,  and  no  excuse  in  the  nature  of 
;e  arts  themselves.  Briefly,  to-day,  I  would  sum  for 
the  statement  of  their  historical  continuity  which  you 
find  expanded  and  illustrated  in  my  former  lectures.^ 
Only  observe,  for  the  present,  you  must  please  put 
jntal  Art  entirely  out  of  your  heads.  I  shall  allow 
elf  no  allusion  to  China,  Japan,  India,  Assyria,  or 
bia:  though  this  restraint  on  myself  will  be  all  the 
e  difficult,  because,  only  a  few  weeks  since,  I  had  a 

[Compare  the  Preface  to  Xeiiophon's  Economist,  Vol.  XXXI.  p.  8.] 

"For  a  similar  description  of  the  South  Kensington  Museum,  see  "  A  iVIuseum 

cture  Gallery/'  §  3  (Vol.  XXXI V.)^  and  compare  the  other  passages  there 

[See  Vol.  XIV.  p.  84G  n.] 

[Ruskin  refers,  as  will  be  seen  from  the  facsimile,  to  Aratra  and  Ariadne: 
ol.  XX.  p.  333,  and  Vol.  XXII.  pp.  406,  440,  441.] 


308 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


delightful  audience  of  Sir  Frederick  Leightoii  beside  h 
Arabian  fountain,  and  beneath  his  Aladdin's  palace  glass 
Yet  I  shall  not  allude,  in  what  I  say  of  his  designs,  to  an 
points  in  which  they  may  perchance  have  been  influenced  b 
those  enchantments.  Similarly  there  were  some  charmin 
Zobeides  and  Cleopatras  among  the  variegated  colour  fancit 
of  Mr.  Alma  Tadema  in  the  last  Grosvenor;^  but  I  ha\ 
nothing  yet  to  say  of  thevi:  it  is  only  as  a  careful  an 
learned  interpreter  of  certain  phases  of  Greek  and  Roma 
life,  and  as  himself  a  most  accomplished  painter,  on  lon^ 
established  principles,  that  I  name  him  as  representative] 
"  classic." 

62.  The  summary,  therefore,  which  I  have  to  give  yc 
of  the  course  of  Pagan  and  Gothic  Art  must  be  unde 
stood  as  kept  wholly  on  this  side  of  the  Bosphorus,  an 
recognizing  no  farther  shore  beyond  the  Mediterranea 
Thus  fixing  our  termini,  you  find  from  the  earliest  time 
in  Greece  and  Italy,  a  multitude  of  artists  gradually  pe 
fecting  the  knowledge  and  representation  of  the  hums 
body,  glorified  by  the  exercises  of  war.  And  you  hav 
north  of  Greece  and  Italy,  innumerably  and  incorrigib 
savage  nations,  representing,  with  rude  and  irregular  effort 
on  huge  stones  and  ice-borne  boulders,  on  cave-bones  ar 
forest-stocks  and  logs,  with  any  manner  of  innocent  tintir 
or  scratching  possible  to  them,  sometimes  beasts,  sometime 
hobgoblins — sometimes,  heaven  only  knows  what ;  but  nev 
attaining  any  skill  in  figure-drawing,  until,  whether  invadir 
or  invaded,  Greece  and  Italy  teach  them  what  a  hums 
being  is  like;  and  with  that  help  they  dream  and  blund- 
on  through  the  centuries,  achieving  many  fantastic  ar 
amusing  things,  more  especially  the  art  of  rhyming,  wherel 
they  usually  express  their  notions  of  things  far  better  thj, 
by  painting.  Nevertheless,  in  due  course  we  get  a  Holbe 
out  of  them;  and,  in  the  end,  for  best  product  hithert 

1  [In  the  "Leighton  House,"  Holland  Park  Road,  presented  by  Leightori's  sist< 
to  a  committee  for  public  purposes.] 

2  [The  Winter  Exhibition  at  the  Grosvenor  Gallery,  1882-1888,  consisted  i 
the  most  part  of  a  "Collection  of  the  Works  of  L.  Alma  Tadema,  R.A."] 


III..  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  309 


Si' Joshua,  and  the  supremely  Gothic  Gainsborough,^  whose 
la!  words  we  may  take  for  a  beautiful  reconciliation  of 
ali  schools  and  souls  who  have  done  their  work  to  the 
be:  of  their  knowledge  and  conscience,— "  We  are  all  going 
to  Heaven,  and  Vandyke  is  of  the  company."^ 

63.  We  are  all  going  to  Heaven."  Either  that  is  true 
ofnen  and  nations,  or  else  that  they  are  going  the  other 
wr;  and  the  question  of  questions  for  them  is — not  how 
fa  from  heaven  they  are,  but  whether  they  are  going  to 
it.  Whether  in  Gothic  or  Classic  Art,  it  is  not  the  wisdom 
orLhe  barbarism  that  you  have  to  estimate — not  the  skill 
IK  the  rudeness ; — but  the  tendency.  For  instance,  just 
bore  coming  to  Oxford  this  time,  I  received  by  happy 
chice  from  Florence  the  noble  book  just  published  at 
Mnte  Cassino,  giving  facsimiles  of  the  Benedictine  manu- 
scpts  there,  between  the  tenth  and  thirteenth  centuries.^ 
0:  of  it  I  have  chosen  these  four  magnificent  letters  to 
pl  ;e  in  your  schools — magnificent  I  call  them,  as  pieces 
of  jothic  writing;  but  they  are  still,  you  will  find  on  close 
omination,  extremely  limited  in  range  of  imaginative  sub- 
je .  For  these,  and  all  the  other  letters  of  the  alphabet 
in  chat  central  Benedictine  school  at  the  period  in  ques- 
ts i,  were  composed  of  nothing  else  but  packs  of  white 
d(  s,  jumping,  with  more  contortion  of  themselves  than  has 
b(ri  contrived  even  by  modern  stage  athletes,  through  any 
qvntity  of  hoops.  But  I  place  these  chosen  examples 
in  our  series  of  lessons,  not  as  patterns  of  dog-drawing, 
bi  as  distinctly  progressive  Gothic  art,  leading  infallibly 
foivard — though  the  good  monks  had  no  notion  how  far, — 

[In  the  next  Oxford  course  (see  below,  p.  426  n.)  Ruskin  referred  to  this  pass- 
and  explained  that  '^'^by  ^supremely  Gothic  Gainsborough'  he  meant,  not  that 
sboiough  painted  ^  kings  and  saints  turning  up  their  eyes,  such  as  you  buy 
)  much  a  hundred,  wherewith  to  ornament  your  pseudo-Gothic  temples,'  but 
in  his  portraits  the  face  was  everything,  the  body  nothing,  whereas  the  glory 
assic  art  is  always  in  the  body,  and  never  in  the  face."] 

[Words  spoken  "by  Gainsborough  on  his  deathbed  to  Reynolds  :  see  Fulcher's 
oj  Gainsborough,  p.  147.] 

[Examples  from  Paleografia  artistica  di  Montecassino  are  in  the  Reference 
«  at  Oxford  :  see  Vol.  XXI.  p.  50.  The  dogs  and  hoops  may  be  seen  more 
cularly  in  Parts  2  (1877),  3  and  4  (1878)  of  the  Monte  Cassino  book  of 
niles.] 


310 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


to  the  Benedictine  collie,  in  Landseer's  Shepherd's  Chf 
Mourner,"  and  the  Benedictine  bulldog,  in  Mr.  Britl 
Riviere's  "  Sympathy."  ^ 

64.  On  the  other  hand,  here  is  an  enlargement,  ma; 
to  about  the  proper  scale,  from  a  small  engraving  which] 
brought  with  me  from  Naples,  of  a  piece  of  the  Clas'; 
Pompeian  art  which  has  lately  been  so  much  the  admiratii 
of  the  aesthetic  cliques  of  Paris  and  London.^  It  purpo ; 
to  represent  a  sublimely  classic  cat,  catching  a  sublime 
classic  chicken;  and  is  perhaps  quite  as  much  like  a  cat  i 
the  white  spectra  of  Monte  Cassino  are  like  dogs.  But  : 
a  glance  I  can  tell  you, — nor  will  you,  surely,  doubt  t| 
truth  of  the  telling, — that  it  is  art  in  precipitate  decadencj; 
that  no  bettering  or  even  far  dragging  on  of  its  existeRji 
is  possible  for  it;  that  it  is  the  work  of  a  nation  alrea| 
in  the  jaws  of  death,  and  of  a  school  which  is  passing  awr 
in  shame. 

65.  Remember,  therefore,  and  write  it  on  the  ve' 
tables  of  your  heart,  that  you  must  never,  when  you  hat 
to  judge  of  character  in  national  styles,  regard  them  i 
their  decadence,  but  always  in  their  spring  and  youif 
Greek  art  is  to  be  studied  from  Homeric  days  to  the 
of  Marathon ;  Gothic,  from  Alfred  to  the  Black  PriDj!) 
in  England,  from  Clovis  to  St.  Louis  in  France;  all 
the  combination  of  both,  which  occurs  first  with  absol4 
balance  in  the  pulpit  by  Nicholas  of  Pisa  in  her  Baptj 
tery,^  thenceforward  up  to  Perugino  and  Sandro  Botticel 
A  period  of  decadence  follows  among  all  the  nations  1: 
Europe,  out  of  the  ashes  and  embers  of  which  the  flar| 

1  [For  other  references  to  the  "Shepherd's  Chief  Mourner,"  see  Vol.  III.  pp.| 
114,  Vol.  IV.  p.  302  n.,  Vol.  VII.  p.  338;  and  to  "Sympathy/'  "A  Museum." 
Picture  Gallery,"  §  20  (Vol.  XXXIV.).  The  report  (Pall  Mall  Gazette,  May  I 
adds : —  j 

'^The  mention  of  the  do^  led  Mr.  Ruskin  to  remark  incidentally  t!: 
the  nucleus  of  ail  that  was  best  in  the  Academy  was  to  be  found 
three  pictures  which  hang  side  by  side  in  Room  4 — Mr.  Briton  Riviei.i 
^Playfellow'  (392),  'quite  the  most  beautiful  thing  of  the  kind  I  t' 
saw,'  and  Mr.  P.  R.  Morris's  two  pictures  of  children  (391  and  397)."] 

2  [This  enlargement  was  made  by  Mr.  Macdonald  ;  it  was  not  placed  in  \\ 
Oxford  Collection.] 

3  [See  in  Vol.  XXIII.  Plate  VI.  and  pp.  22,  23.] 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  311 


]  ips  again  in  Rubens  and  Vandyke ;  and  so  gradually  glows 
ad  coruscates  into  the  intermittent  corona  of  indescribably 
vrious  modern  mind,  of  which  in  England  you  may,  as  I 
iid,.  take  Sir  Joshua  and  Gainsborough  for  not  only  the 
ipmost,  but  the  hitherto  total,  representatives;  total,  that 
j  to  say,  out  of  the  range  of  landscape,  and  above  that  of 
'tire  and  caricature.  All  that  the  rest  can  do  partially, 
ley  can  do  perfectly.  They  do  it,  not  only  perfectly, 
]it  nationally;  they  are  at  once  the  greatest,  and  the 
'nglishest,  of  all  our  school. 

The  Englishest — and  observe  also,  therefore  the  greatest: 
ike  that  for  an  universal,  exceptionless  law; — the  largest 
l  ul  of  any  country  is  altogether  its  own.  Not  the  citizen 
(  the  world,  but  of  his  own  city, — nay,  for  the  best  men, 
)u  may  say,  of  his  own  village.  Patriot  always,  pro- 
ncial  always,  of  his  own  crag  or  field  always.^  A  Liddes- 
( de  man,  or  a  Tynedale ;  Angelico  from  the  Hock  of 
esole,  or  Virgil  from  the  Mantuan  marsh.     You  dream 

National  unity! — you  might  as  well  strive  to  melt  the 
lars  down  into  one  nugget,  and  stamp  them  small  into 
')in  with  one  Csesar  s  face. 

66.  What  mental  qualities,  especially  English,  you  find 

the  painted  heroes  and  beauties  of  Reynolds  and  Gains- 
trough,  I  can  only  discuss  with  you  hereafter.^  But  what 
eternal  and  corporeal  qualities  these  masters  of  our  masters 
ve  to  paint,  I  must  ask  you  to-day  to  consider  for  a  few 
Loments,  under  Mr.  Carlyle's  guidance,  as  well  as  mine, 
id  with  the  analysis  of  Sartor  Resartus,  Take,  as  types 
r  the  best  work  ever  laid  on  British  canvas, — types  which 
am  sure  you  will  without  demur  accept, — Sir  Joshua's 
.ge  of  Innocence,  and  Mrs.  Pelham  feeding  chickens;^ 
rains  borough's  Mrs.  Graham,  divinely  doing  nothing,  and 

^  [See  further  on  this  subject,  §  197  (below,  p.  897).] 
^  This,  however,  was  not  done.] 

^  [For  other  references  to  ^^The  Age  of  Innocence,"  see  Ariadne  Florentina^ 
125  (Vol.  XXII.  p.  879),  and  Flamboyant  Architecture,  §  11  (Vol.  XIX.  p.  250)  ; 

"Mrs.  Pelham,"  Sir  Joshua  and  Holbein,  §  10  (Vol.  XIX.  p.  9),  and  St.  Georges 
uild  Report,  1884  (Vol.  XXX.  p.  72  n.).] 


312 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


Blue  Boy  similarly  occupied;  and,  finally,  Reynolds'  Lon  ! 
Heathfield  magnanimously  and  irrevocably  locking  up  Gib  ' 
raltar/    Suppose,  now,  under  the  instigation  of  Mr.  CarlyL 
and  Sartor,  and  under  the  counsel  of  Zeuxis  and  Parrhasius  ^ 
we  had  it  really  in  our  power  to  bid  Sir  Joshua  and  Gains  ^ 
borough  paint  all  these  over  again,  in  the  classic  manner 
Would  you  really  insist  on  having  her  white  frock  taken  of 
the  Age  of  Innocence;  on  the  Blue  Boy's  divesting  himsel 
of  his  blue;   on — we  may  not  dream  of  anything  mort  ' 
classic — Mrs.  Graham's  taking  the  feathers  out  of  her  hat  ^ 
and  on  Lord  Heathfield's  parting, — I  dare  not  suggest,  wit!  ^ 
his  regimentals,  but  his  orders  of  the  Bath,  or  what  else? 

67.  I  own  that  I  cannot,  even  myself,  as  I  propose  th( 
alternatives,  answer  absolutely  as  a  Goth,  nor  without  somt 
wistful  leanings  towards  classic  principle.     Nevertheless,  ) 
feel  confident  in  your  general  admission  that  the  charm  o 
all  these  pictures  is  in  great  degree  dependent  on  toilette  .i  ' 
that  the  fond  and  graceful  flatteries  of  each  master  do  inl  ] 
no  small  measure  consist  in  his  management  of  frilling^'  ' 
and  trimmings,  cuffs  and  collarettes ;  and  on  beautiful  fling 
ings  or  fastenings  of  investiture,  which  can  only  here  anc 
there  be  called  a  drapery,  but  insists  on  the  perfectness  o 
the  forms  it  conceals,  and  deepens  their  harmony  by  it: 
contradiction.     And  although  now  and  then,  when  greai 
ladies  wish  to  be  painted  as  sibyls  or  goddesses,  Sir  Joshua 
does  his  best  to  bethink  himself  of  Michael  Angelo,  and  ' 
Guido,  and  the  Lightnings,  and  the  Auroras,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it, — you  will,  I  think,  admit  that  the  culminating!  ' 
sweetness  and  rightness  of  him  are  in  some  little  Lady!  ^ 
So-and-so,  with  round  hat  and  strong  shoes ;  and  that  al 
final  separation  from  the  Greek  art  which  can  be  proudj 
in  a  torso  without  a  head,  is  achieved  by  the  master  wh(i| 
paints  for  you  five  little  girls'  heads,  without  ever  a  torso  1* 

1  [No.  Ill  ill  the  National  GaUery  ;  compare  Vol.  XIV.  p.  223.  Gainsborough's 
"Blue  Boy"  (Jonathan  Buttall)  is  at  Grosvenor  House;  his  ''Hon.  Mrs.  Graham" 
{nee  Cathcart)  is  in  the  National  Galler}-^  of  Scotland.] 

2  [For  another  reference  to  the  "  Heads  of  Angels/'  painted  from  the  daughter 
of  Lord  William  Lennox  (No.  182  in  the  National  Gallery),  see  Queen  of  the  Air^ 
§  176  (Vol.  XIX.  p.  419).] 


1 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  313 


68.  Thus,  then,  we  arrive  at  a  clearly  intelligible  dis- 
iiction  between  the  Gothic  and  Classic  schools,  and  a 
<3ar  notion  also  of  their  dependence  on  one  another.  All 
j  sting  apart, — I  think  you  may  safely  take  Luca  della 
lobbia  with  his  scholars  for  an  exponent  of  their  unity,  to 
i  nations.  Luca  is  brightly  Tuscan,  with  the  dignity  of 
f  Greek ;  he  has  English  simplicity,  French  grace,  Italian 
(  votion, — and  is,  I  think,  delightful  to  the  truest  lovers 

<  art  in  all  nations,  and  of  all  ranks.  The  Florentine 
Ontadina  rejoices  to  see  him  above  her  fruit-stall  in  the 
]  ercato  Vecchio ;  ^  and,  having  by  chance  the  other  day  a 
I  tle  Nativity  by  him  on  the  floor  of  my  study  ^  (one  of 
Is  frequentest  designs  of  the  Infant  Christ  laid  on  the 
|Ound,  and  the  Madonna  kneeling  to  Him) — having  it,  I 
iy,  by  chance  on  the  floor,  when  a  fashionable  little  girl 
^  th  her  mother  came  to  see  me,  the  child  about  three 
;;ars  old — though  there  were  many  pretty  and  glittering 
lings  about  the  room  which  might  have  caught  her  eye 

<  her  fancy,  the  first  thing,  nevertheless,  my  little  lady 
oes,  is  to  totter  quietly  up  to  the  white  Infant  Christ, 
^  d  kiss  it. 

69.  Taking,  then,  Luca,  for  central  between  Classic  and 
(3thic  in  sculpture,  for  central  art  of  Florence,  in  painting, 
[  show  you  the  copies  made  for  the  St.  George's  Guild,  of 
ie  two  frescoes  by  Sandro  Botticelli,  lately  bought  by  the 
^^ench  Government  for  the  Louvre.^  These  copies,  made 
iider  the  direction  of  Mr.  C.  F.  Murray,  while  the  frescoes 
^sre  still  untouched,  are  of  singular  value  now.  For  in 
1  eir  transference  to  canvas  for  carriage  much  violent  damage 

'  [Now  destroyed  ;  the  Luca  della  Robbia  is  in  the  Bargello :  see  Mornings  in 
Mce,  §  27  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  328).] 

[This  piece  remains  over  the  mantelpiece  in  the  study  at  Brantwood.] 

^  [See  Vol.  XXI.  p.  299.  One  of  the  copies  is  in  the  Ruskin  Drawing  School 
id  is  here  reproduced  (Plate  XXXVII.).  The  two  frescoes  are  called  in  the  cata- 
Irue  of  the  Louvre:  ^'^1297.  Giovanna  Tornabuoni  and  the  Graces^  or  Virtues/' 
«i  *'1298.  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni  and  the  Liberal  Arts."  According  to  the  inter- 
jitation  usually  given  of  the  latter  fresco^  Philosophy  is  the  presiding  "Muse"; 
id  Arithmetic,  the  Science  unnamed  by  Ruskin  ;  whilst  it  is  Dialectic,  the  Seventh 

5eral  Art,  who  leads  in  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni,  a  young  man  famous  among  his 

<  atemporaries  for  his  learning  and  modesty.    The  subject  of  the  other  fresco  is 


314 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


was  sustained  by  the  originals;  and  as,  even  before,  they 
were  not  presentable  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  French 
public,  the  backgrounds  were  filled  in  with  black,  the 
broken  edges  cut  away;  and,  thus  repainted  and  maimed 
they  are  now,  disgraced  and  glassless,  let  into  the  wall  oil 
a  stair-landing  on  the  outside  of  the  Louvre  galleries.  \ 

You  will  judge  for  yourselves  of  their  deservings ;  but 
for  my  own  part  I  can  assure  you  of  their  being  quite 
central  and  classic  Florentine  painting,  and  types  of  the 
manner  in  which,  so  far  as  you  follow  the  instruction!' 
given  in  the  Laws  of  Fesole,  you  will  be  guided  to  paint 
Their  subjects  should  be  of  special  interest  to  us  in  Oxford 
and  Cambridge,  as  bearing  on  institutions  of  colleges  foi 
maidens  no  less  than  bachelors.  For  these  frescoes  repre 
sent  the  Florentine  ideal  of  education  for  maid  and  bachelor 
— the  one  baptized  by  the  Graces  for  her  marriage,  and 
the  other  brought  to  the  tutelage  of  the  Great  Powers  o\ 
Knowledge,  under  a  great  presiding  Muse,  whose  name  yoi 
must  help  me  to  interpret ;  and  with  good  help,  both  fron 
maid  and  bachelor,  I  hope  we  shall  soon  be  able  to  name 
and  honour,  all  their  graces  and  virtues  rightly. 

Five  out  of  the  six  Sciences  and  Powers  on  her  righ1 
hand  and  left,  I  know.  They  are,  on  her  left — geometry 
astronomy,  and  music ;  on  her  right — logic  and  rhetoric 
The  third,  nearest  her,  I  do  not  know,  and  will  not  guess 
She  herself  bears  a  mighty  bow,  and  I  could  give  you  con- 
jectural interpretations  of  her,  if  1  chose,  to  any  extent 
but  will  wait  until  I  hear  what  you  think  of  her  yourselves 
I  must  leave  you  also  to  discover  by  whom  the  youth  i{ 
introduced  to  the  great  conclave;  but  observe,  that,  as  ir 
the  frescoes  of  the  Spanish  Chapel,  before  he  can  approacl 

the  reception  of  Giovaniia  Toniabuoiii  by  Venus  and  the  Graces,  The  frescoes  wen 
executed  by  Botticelli  in  1486^  beiii^  commissioned  by  Giovanni  Tornabuoni  on  th( 
occasion  of  the  marriage  of  his  son,  Lorenzo^  with  Giovanna  degli  Albizzi.  The; 
adorned  the  walls  of  a  room  in  the  Tornabuoni  villa  near  Fiesole.  At  some  subse 
quent  date  the  room  Mas  whitewashed;  in  187^3  Dr.  Lemmi,  then  the  owner  of  tht 
villa,  observed  traces  of  colour  through  cracks  in  tlie  plaster^  and  Botticelh's  paint 
ings  were  brought  to  light.  In  1882  the  two  frescoes  (a  third  fell  to  pieces)  wen 
acquired  for  the  Louvre.]  , 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  315 


r.hat  presence  he  has  passed  through  the  "  Strait  Gate,"  ^  of 
which  the  bar  has  fallen,  and  the  valve  is  thrown  outwards. 
This  portion  of  the  fresco,  on  which  the  most  important 
significance  of  the  whole  depended,  was  cut  away  in  the 
French  restoration. 

70.  Taking  now  Luca  and  Sandro  for  standards  of  sweet 
3onsent  in  the  feelings  of  either  school,  falling  aside  from 
them  according  to  their  likings  or  knowledge,  you  have 
the  two  evermore  adverse  parties,  of  whom  Lord  Lindsay 
speaks,^  as  one  studying  the  spirit,  and  the  other  the  flesh: 
but  you  will  find  it  more  simply  true  to  say  that  the  one 
studies  the  head,  and  the  other  the  body.  And  I  think 
[  am  almost  alone  among  recent  tutors  or  professors,  in 
•ecommending  you  to  study  both,  at  their  best,  and  neither 
:he  skull  of  the  one,  nor  skeleton  of  the  other. 

71.  I  had  a  special  lesson,  leading  me  to  this  balance, 
when  I  was  in  Venice,  in  1880.^  The  authorities  of  the 
Academy  did  me  the  grace  of  taking  down  my  two  pet 
pictures  of  St.  Ursula,  and  putting  them  into  a  quiet  room 
for  me  to  copy.  Now  in  this  quiet  room  where  I  was 
allowed  to  paint,  there  were  a  series  of  casts  from  the 
^gina  marbles,*  which  I  never  had  seen  conveniently  before ; 
and  so,  on  my  right  hand  and  left,  I  had,  all  day  long,  the 
best  pre-Praxit elite  Classic  art,  and  the  best  Pre-Haphaelite 
Gothic  art:  and  could  turn  to  this  side,  or  that,  in  an 
instant,  to  enjoy  either ; — which  I  could  do,  in  each  case, 
with  my  whole  heart;  only  on  this  condition,  that  if  I  was 
to  admire  St.  Ursula,  it  was  necessary  on  the  whole  to  be 
content  with  her  face,  and  not  to  be  too  critical  or  curious 
about  her  elbows ;  but,  in  the  iEgina  marbles,  one's  principal 
attention  had  to  be  given  to  the  knees  and  elbows,  while 
no  ardent  sympathies  were  excited  by  the  fixed  smile  upon 
the  face. 

^  [See  Mornings  in  Florence,  ch.  v.  (Vol.  XXIII.  ])p.  882  seg.).] 

2  [See  the  first  chapter  of  his  Sketches  of  the  History  of  Christian  Art,  1847.] 

3  [A  slip  for  1876:  see  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  xxxviii.] 

*  [For  a  reference  to  these  ^ginetan  casts  in  the  British  Museum,,  see  Aratra 
Pentelid,  §  191  (Vol.  XX.  p.  339).] 


316 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


72.  Without  pressing  our  northern  cherubic  principle  toi 
an  extreme,  it  is  really  a  true  and   extremely  important! 
consequence  that  all  portraiture  is  essentially  Gothic.  Youj 
will  find  it  stated — and  with  completely  illustrative  proof  J 
in  Aratra  Pentelici, — that  portraiture  was  the  destruction  of 
Greek  design;^  certain  exceptions  being  pointed  out  which t 
I  do  not  wish  you  now  to  be  encumbered  with.  You 
may  understand  broadly  that  we  Goths  claim  portraiture 
altogether  for  our  own,  and  contentedly  leave  the  classic  | 
people  to  round  their  chins  by  rule,  and  fix  their  smiles  by 
precedent :  we  like  a  little  irregularity  in  feature,  and  a  little 
caprice  in  humour  —  and  with  the  condition  of  dramatic 
truth  in  passion,  necessarily  accept  dramatic  difference  in} 
feature.  j 

73.  Our  English  masters  of  portraiture  must  not  there-! 
fore  think  that  I  have  treated  them  with  disrespect,  in  not 
naming  them,  in  these  lectures,  separately  from  others.  | 
Portraiture  is  simply  a  necessary  function  of  good  Gothic 
painting,  nor  can  any  man  claim  pre-eminence  in  epic  or 
historic  art  who  does  not  first  excel  in  that.  Nevertheless, 
be  it  said  in  passing,  that  the  number  of  excellent  portraits 
given  daily  in  our  illustrated  papers  prove  the  skill  of  mere 
likeness-taking  to  be  no  unfrequent  or  particularly  admirable 
one;  and  that  it  is  to  be  somewhat  desired  that  our  pro- 1 
fessed  portrait-painters  should  render  their  work  valuable  in 
all  respects,  and  exemplary  in  its  art,  no  less  than  delight- 1 
ful  in  its  resemblance.    The  public,  who  are  naturally  in 
the  habit  of  requiring  rather  the  felicity  and  swiftness  of 
likeness  than  abstract   excellence  in  painting,  are  always  j 
ready  to  forgive  the  impetuosity  which  resembles  force; 
and  the  interests  connected  with  rate  of  production  tend 
also  towards  the  encouragement  of  superficial  execution. 
Whereas  in  a  truly  great  school,  for  the  reasons  given  in} 
my  last  lecture,'"  it  may  often  be  inevitable,  and  sometimes 

*  Ante,  §  SS  [p.  289]. 
1  [Aratra,  §  120  (Vol.  XX.  p.  281).] 


I 


« 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  317 

desirable,  that  works  of  high  imaginative  range  and  faculty 
should  be  slightly  traced,  and  without  minuteness  finished  ; 
but  there  is  no  excuse  for  imperfection  in  a  portrait,  or 
failure  of  attention  to  its  minor  accessories.  I  have  long 
ago  given,  for  one  instance  of  perfect  portraiture,  Holbein's 
George  Guysen,  at  Berlin,  quite  one  of  the  most  accom- 
plished pictures  in  the  world  ;^  and  in  my  last  visit  to 
Florence  none  of  the  pictures  before  known  in  the  Uffizii 
retained  their  power  over  me  so  completely  as  a  portrait  of 
a  lady  in  the  Tribune,^  which  is  placed  as  a  pendant  to 
Raphael's  Fornarina,  and  has  always  been  attributed  to 
Raphael,  being  without  doubt  by  some  earlier  and  more 
aborious  master ;  and,  by  whomsoever  it  may  be,  unrivalled 
.n  European  galleries  for  its  faultless  and  unaffected  finish. 

74.  I  may  be  permitted  in  this  place  to  express  my 
admiration  of  the  kind  of  portraiture,  which,  without  sup- 
porting its  claim  to  public  attention  by  the  celebrity  of  its 
subjects,  renders  the  pictures  of  Mr.  Stacy  Marks  so  valu- 
able as  epitomes  and  types  of  English  life.  No  portrait  of 
my  recognized  master  in  science  could  be  more  interesting 
:han  the  gentle  Professor  in  this  year's  Academy,^  from 
vvhom  even  a  rebelliously  superficial  person  like  myself 
anight  be  content  to  receive  instruction  in  the  mysteries 
Df  anatomy.  Many  an  old  traveller's  remembrances  were 
juite  pathetically  touched  by  his  monumental  record  of 
:he  Three  Jolly  Postboys";*  and  that  he  scarcely  paints 
for  us  but  in  play,  is  our  own  fault.  Among  all  the  en- 
ieavours  in  English  historical  painting  exhibited  in  recent 
years,  quite  the  most  conscientious,  vivid,  and  instructive, 
was  Mr.  Marks'  rendering  of  the  interview  between  Lord 
Say  and  Jack  Cade;^  and  its  quiet  sincerity  was  only  the 
cause  of  its  being  passed  without  attention. 

1  [See  the  paper  on  Sir  Joshua  and  Holbein,  Vol.  XIX.  (p.  10,  and  Plate  II.)] 

2  [The  so-called  portrait  of  Maddalena  Strozzi,  wife  of  Angelo  Doni  ;  No.  1120 
in  the  Uffizi.] 

[A  fancy  portrait  of  an  ornithologist;  No.  493  in  the  exhibition  of  1883.] 
*  [No.  166  in  the  exhibition  of  1875  :  compare  Vol.  XIV.  p.  278.] 
^  [No.  242  in  the  exhibition  of  1882.    For  another  reference  to  the  picture, 
see  Riiskin's  Address  to  the  Arundel  Society  in  1882  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 


318  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


75.  In  turning  now  from  these  subjects  of  Gothic  art  to 
consider  the  classic  ideal,  though  I  do  so  in  painful  sense 
of  transgressing  the  limits  of  my  accurate  knowledge,  I  do 
not  feel  entirely  out  of  my  element,  because  in  some  degree 
I  claim  even  Sir  Frederic  Leighton  as  a  kindred  Goth. 
For,  if  you  will  overpass  quickly  in  your  minds  what  I 
you  remember  of  the  treasures  of  Greek  antiquity,  you  ; 
will  find  that,  among  them  all,  you  can  get  no  notion  of  ! 
what  a  Greek  little  girl  was  like.^    Matronly  Junos,  and  i 
tremendous  Demeters,  and  Gorgonian  Minervas,  as  many  I 
as  you  please ;  but  for  my  own  part,  always  speaking  as 

a  Goth,  I  had  much  rather  have  had  some  idea  of  the 
Spartan  Helen  dabbling  with  Castor  and  Pollux  in  the 
Eurotas — none  of  them  over  ten  years  old.  And  it  is  with 
extreme  gratitude,  therefore,  and  unqualified  admiration, 
that  I  find  Sir  Frederic  condescending  from  the  majesties 
of  Olympus  to  the  worship  of  these  unappalling  powers, 
which,  heaven  be  thanked,  are  as  brightly  Anglo-Saxon  , 
as  Hellenic;  and  painting  for  us,  with  a  soft  charm  pecu-  ' 
liarly  his  own,  the  witchcraft  and  the  wonderfulness  of 
childhood.^ 

76.  I  have  no  right  whatever  to  speak  of  the  works  of 
higher  effort  and  claim,  which  have  been  the  result  of  his 
acutely  observant  and  enthusiastic  study  of  the  organism  of 
the  human  body.  I  am  indeed  able  to  recognize  his  skill; 
but  have  no  sympathy  with  the  subjects  that  admit  of  its 
display.  I  am  enabled,  however,  to  show  you  with  what 
integrity  of  application  it  has  been  gained,  by  his  kindness 
in  lending  me  for  the  Ruskin  school  two  perfect  early 

^  [On  this  subject^  see  the  note  to  Aratra  Pentelici,  §  194  (Vol.  XX.  p.  342).] 
^  [In  the  lecture  as  reported  there  was  an  additional  passage  here : — 

His  examples  in  this  year's  Academy  could  not,  however,  be  regarded 
as  satisfactory.  The  one  called  '  Kittens '  was  clearly  finished  hastily  ;  the 
critics  were  forced  to  praise  the  child's  dress,  and  not  her  face,  and  the 
kitten,  he  felt  sure,  was  studied  from  a  puppy.  But,  speaking  generally, 
he  could  not  praise  too  highly  Sir  F.  Leighton's  work  of  this  kind,  which  ;| 
only  missed  the  level  of  Correggio  by  not  being  painted  lightly  or  broadly 
enough." 

{Pall  Mall  Ga^siette,   May   21.)       Kittens"  was  No.   330  in    the  exhibition  of 
1883.] 


XXXVIII 


S  tu dy  of  a  L e m_ o n.  Tr e  e  ; 


Capri,  18  5  9 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  319 


rawings,  one  of  a  lemon  tree, — and  another,  of  the  same 
ate,  of  a  Byzantine  well,  which  determine  for  you  without 
ppeal,  the  question  respecting  necessity  of  dehneation  as 
le  first  skill  of  a  painter.^  Of  all  our  present  masters.  Sir 
rederic  Leighton  delights  most  in  softly-blended  colours, 
ad  his  ideal  of  beauty  is  more  nearly  that  of  Correggio 
lan  any  seen  since  Correggio's  time.  But  you  see  by 
'hat  precision  of  terminal  outline  he  at  first  restrained, 
ad  exalted,  his  gift  of  beautiful  vaghezza. 

77.  Nor  is  the  lesson  one  whit  less  sternly  conveyed  to 
ou  by  the  work  of  M.  Alma  Tadema,  who  differs  from 
11  the  artists  I  have  ever  known,  except  John  Lewis,  in 
le  gradual  increase  of  technical  accuracy,  which  attends 
nd  enhances  together  the  expanding  range  of  his  dramatic 
ivention;  while  every  year  he  displays  more  varied  and 
omplex  powers  of  minute  draughtsmanship,  more  espe- 
ially  in  architectural  detail,  wherein,  somewhat  priding  my- 
elf  as  a  specialty,  I  nevertheless  receive  continual  lessons 
rem  him ;  except  only  in  this  one  point,— that,  with  me, 
he  translucency  and  glow  of  marble  is  the  principal  char- 
cter  of  its  substance,  while  with  M.  Tadema  it  is  chiefly 
he  superficial  lustre  and  veining  which  seem  to  attract 
dm ;  and  these,  also,  seen,  not  in  the  strength  of  southern 
un,  but  in  the  cool  twilight  of  luxurious  chambers.  With 
/hich  insufficient,  not  to  say  degrading,  choice  of  archi- 
ectural  colour  and  shade,  there  is  a  fallacy  in  his  classic 
dealism,  against  which,  while  I  respectfully  acknowledge 
lis  scholarship  and  his  earnestness,  it  is  necessary  that  you 
jhould  be  gravely  and  conclusively  warned. 

78.  I  said  that  the  Greeks  studied  the  body  glori- 
ied  by  war; ^  but  much  more,  remember,  they  studied 
;he  7nind  glorified  by  it.  It  is  the  mvl^  'Ax^X^o?,  not  the 
nuscular  force,  which  the  good  beauty  of  the  body  itself 

^  [The  "Lemon  Tree"  (Plate  XXXVIII.)  was  drawn  at  Capri  in  the  spring 
)f  1859  ;  the  "Byzantine  well-head"  is  dated  1852.  These  pencil  studies  were 
eturned  to  the  artist,  and  are  now  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  S.  Pepys  Cockerell. 
The  well-head  is  reproduced  at  vol.  i.  p.  81  of  Mrs.  Russell  Barrington's  Life, 
Utters,  and  Works  of  Frederic  Leighton  (George  Allen,  1906).] 

2  [See  above,  p.  308.] 


320 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


signifies;  and  you  may  most  strictly  take  the  Homeri 
words  describing  the  aspect  of  Achilles  showing  himself  o 
the  Greek  rampart  as  representative  of  the  total  Gree 
ideal.    Learn  by  heart,  unforgettably,  the  seven  hnes — 

avrap  'A^fXXei'?  (vpro  Su(pi\o9'  ajmcpl  ^'  ^A.Orivy]  j 

cojULOi^  i(pOljuLOicri  /3(x\^  aiylSa  6v(Tav6ecrcrap, 

ajUL(pi  Se  ot  KecpoXii  V€(pos  earTecpe  Sia  Oedcou 

-^pvcreov,  e/c  ^'  avrou  Saiep  (p\6ya  Trajuipavoaxrav  ,  ,  , 

rjVLoyoL  ^'  eKirkrjyev^  eirel  'ISov  aKajixaTOV  irvp  j 

Seivov  virep  KecpaXrjg  jueyadv/ULov  DajXetcovog 

Saiofxcuov'  TO       eSaie  Oea  yXavKW7ri9  *A.6rivr]^ — 

which  are  enough  to  remind  you  of  the  whole  context 
and  to  assure  you  of  the  association  of  light  and  cloud 
in  their  terrible  mystery,  with  the  truth  and  majesty  o 
human  form,  in  the  Greek  conception;  light  and  cloud 
whether  appointed  either  to  show  or  to  conceal,  both  giver 
by  a  divine  spirit,  according  to  the  bearing  of  your  owii 
university  shield,  ''Dominus  illuminatio."     In  all  ancieni 
heroic  subjects,  you  will  find  these  two  ideas  of  light  anc 
mystery  combined ;  and  these  with  height  of  standing— 
the  Goddess   central   and   high  in  the   pediment  of  hei. 
temple,  the  hero  on  his  chariot,   or  the   Egyptian  kin^' 
colossal  above  his  captives. 

79.  Now  observe,  that  whether  of  Greek  or  Romar 
life,  M.  Alma  Tadema's  pictures  are  always  in  twilight- 
interiors,  v-TTo  arvjuL/uLiyei  cTKia,'^  I  don't  know  if  you  saw  the| 
collection  of  them  last  year  at  the  Grosvenor,^  but  witfe 
that  universal  twilight  there  was  also  universal  crouching 
or  lolling  posture, — either  in  fear   or  laziness.    And  thel 

'i 

^  [Iliad,  xviii.  203-206,  225-227,  thus  rendered  by  Lang,  Leaf,  and  Myers:! 
''But  Achilles  dear  to  Zeus  arose,  and  around  his  strong  shoulders  Athene  cast' 
her  tasselled  aegis,  and  around  his  head  the  bright  goddess  set  a  crown  of  a  golden 
cloud,  and  kindled  therefrom  a  blazing  flame.  .  .  .  And  the  charioteers  were  amazed 
when  they  saw  the  unwearying  fire  blaze  fierce  on  the  head  of  the  great-hearted^ 
son  of  Peleus,  for  the  bright-eyed  goddess  Athene  made  it  blaze."]  I 

2  [Plato,  Phadrus,  239  C:  compare  Fors  Clavigera^  Letter  88,  %  4  (Vol.  XXIX. 
p.  883).] 

^  [See  above,  §  61,  p.  308.] 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  321 


lost  gloomy,  the  most  crouching,  the  most  dastardly  of 
J I  these  representations  of  classic  life,  was  the  little  picture 
(  lied  the  Pyrrhic  Dance,^  of  which  the  general  effect  was 
cactly  like  a  microscopic  view  of  a  small  detachment  of 
lack-beetles,  in  search  of  a  dead  rat. 

80.  I  have  named  to  you  the  Achillean  splendour  as 
jimary  type  of  Greek  war;  but  you  need  only  glance,  in 
]iur  memory,  for  a  few  instants,  over  the  habitual  expres- 
jms  of  all  the  great  poets,  to  recognize  the  magnificence 
(  light,  terrible  or  hopeful;  the  radiance  of  armour,^  over 
{l  the  field  of  battle,  or  flaming  at  every  gate  of  the  city; 
J  in  the  blazoned  heraldry  of  the  Seven  against  Thebes,^ — 
(  beautiful,  as  in  the  golden  armour  of  Glaucus,  down  to 
te  baser  brightness  for  which  Camilla  died:*  remember 
j;o  that  the  ancient  Doric  dance  was  strictly  the  dance  of 
.polio;  seized  again  by  your  own  mightiest  poet  for  the 
(ief  remnant  of  the  past  in  the  Greece  of  to-day — 

"  You  have  the  Pyrrhic  dance  as  yet ; 
Where  is  the  Pyrrhic  phalanx  gone  ? "  ^ 

And  this  is  just  the  piece  of  classic  life  which  your 
iieteenth  century  fancy  sets  forth  under  its  fuliginous  and 
(iitharoid  disfigurement  and  disgrace. 

I  say,  your  nineteenth  century  fancy,  for  M.  Alma 
'  idema  does  but  represent — or  rather,  has  haplessly  got 
I  nself  entangled  in, — the  vast  vortex  of  recent  Italian  and 

I  ench  revolutionary  rage  against  all  that  resists,  or  ever 
ci  resist,  its  licence;  in  a  word,  against  all  priesthood  and 
liighthood. 

The  Koman  state,  observe,  in  the  strength  of  it  expresses 

^  [Painted  in  1869 ;  No.  55  (lent  by  Mr.  C.  Gassiot)  in  the  Alma  Tadema  exhibi- 

I I  at  the  Grosvenor.  1882-1883.  Compare  Ariadne  Florentina,  §  240  (Vol.  XXII. 
Pi72).] 

^  [Compare  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  i.  ch.  xx.,  where  Ruskin^  discusses  the  use  of 
aiour  in  painting,  sculpture,  and  poetry  (Vol.  IX.  pp.  254-255).] 

'  [For  the  reference  here  to  ^schylus,  see  Vol.  XX.  p.  210 ;  and  for  the  golden 
aiour  of  Glaucus,  see  Iliad,  vi.  236.] 

*  [For  other  references  to  Camilla,  see  Queen  of  the  Air,  §  32  (Vol.  XIX.  p.  329), 
a  I  the  passages  there  noted.] 

^  [Don  Juan,  iii.  86:  compare  Vol.  XXXI.  p.  348.] 

XXXIII.  X 


322  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


both  these ;  the  orders  of  chivalry  do  not  rise  out  of  th 
disciplining  of  the  hordes  of  Tartar  horsemen,  but  by  th  ^ 
Christianizing  of  the  Homan  eques  ;  and  the  noble  priest! 
hood  of  Western  Christendom  is  not,  in  the  heart  of  ill  i 
hieratic,  but  pontifical.  And  it  is  the  last  corruption  c' 
this  Roman  state,  and  its  Bacchanalian  phrenzy,  which  W 
Alma  Tadema  seems  to  hold  it  his  heavenly  mission  t 
pourtray.  I 

81.  I  have  no  mind,  as  I  told  you,  to  darken  the  health'  ^'^ 
work  I  hope  to  lead  you  into  by  any  frequent  reference  t,  " 
antagonist  influences.  But  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  mj  * 
to-day  to  distinguish,  once  for  all,  what  it  is  above  every  ^ 
thing  your  duty,  as  scholars  in  Oxford,  to  know  and  lov 

— the  perpetual  laws  of  classic  literature  and  art,  the  law 
of  the  Muses,  from  what  has  of  late  again  infected  th  ^ 
schools  of  Europe  \mder  the  pretence  of  classic  study,  bein 
indeed  only  the  continuing  poison  of  the  Renaissance,  an,  t 
ruled,  not  by  the  choir  of  the  Muses,  but  by  the  spawn  c  * 
the  Python.    And  this  I  have  been  long  minded  to  dc 
but  am  only  now  enabled  to  do  completely  and  clearly  « 
and  beyond  your  doubt,  by  having  obtained  for  you  th 
evidence,  unmistakable,  of  what  remains  classic  from  th 
ancient  life  of  Italy — the  ancient  Etruscan  life,  down  i 
this  day ;  which  is  the  perfection  of  humility,  modesty,  an 
serviceableness,  as  opposed  to  the  character  which  remaii 
in  my  mind  as  the  total  impression  of  the  Academy  an 
Grosvenor, — that  the  young  people  of  this  day  desire  i 
be  painted  first  as  proud,  saying,  How  grand  I  am ;  no 
as  immodest,  saying,  How  beautiful  I  am ;  lastly  as  idl  i? 
saying,  I  am  able  to  pay  for  flunkeys,  and  never  did 
stroke  of  work  in  my  life. 

82.  Since  the  day  of  the  opening  of  the  great  Mai 
Chester  exhibition  in  1857,  every  Englishman,  desiring  1 
express  interest  in  the  arts,  considers  it  his  duty  to  asse 
with  Keats  that  a  thing  of  beauty  is  a  Joy  for  ever.^  I  c 
not  know  in  what  sense  the  saying  was  understood  by  tl 

1  [See  Vol.  XVI.  p.  11.] 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  323 


anchester  school.  But  this  I  know,  that  what  joy  may 
nain  still  for  you  and  for  your  children — in  the  fields, 
e  homes,  and  the  churches  of  England — you  must  win 

otherwise  reading  the  fallacious  line.  A  beautiful  thing 
iy  exist  but  for  a  moment,  as  a  reality; — it  exists  for 
er  as  a  testimony.    To  the  law  and  to  the  witness  of 

the  nations  must  appeal,  "in  secula  seculorum";  and 

very  deed  and  very  truth,  a  thing  of  beauty  is  a  law 

ever. 

That  is  the  true  meaning  of  classic  art  and  of  classic 
erature; — not  the  licence  of  pleasure,  but  the  law  of 
odness;  and  if,  of  the  two  words,  /caXo?  KayaQog,  one  can 

left  unspoken,  as  implied  by  the  other,  it  is  the  first, 
t  the  last.  It  is  written  that  the  Creator  of  all  things 
tield  them — not  in  that  they  were  beautiful,  but  in  that 
3y  were  good.^ 

83.  This  law  of  beauty  may  be  one,  for  aught  we  know, 
filling  itself  more  perfectly  as  the  years  roll  on;  but  at 
,st  it  is  one  from  which  no  jot  shall  pass.^  The  beauty 
Greece  depended  on  the  laws  of  Lycurgus;  the  beauty  of 
)me,  on  those  of  Numa;  our  own,  on  the  laws  of  Christ. 
1  all  the  beautiful  features  of  men  and  women,  through- 
t  the  ages,  are  written  the  solemnities  and  majesty  of 
I  law  they  knew,  with  the  charity  and  meekness  of  their 
edience;  on  all  unbeautiful  features  are  written  either 
lorance  of  the  law,  or  the  malice  and  insolence  of  their 
obedience.^ 

84.  I  showed  you,  on  the  occasion  of  my  first  address, 
drawing  of  the  death  of  a  Tuscan  girl,*- — a  saint,  in  the 
1  sense  of  that  word,  such  as  there  have  been,  and  still 
!  among  the  Christian  women  of  all  nations.    I  bring 


Genesis  i.  10.] 
Matthew  v.  18.] 

^On  this  subject,  compare  the  chapter  in  vol.  ii.  of  Modern  Painters  on  "Vital 
uty"  (Vol.  IV.  pp.  146  seq.  ;  especially  p.  182) ;  Munera  Pulveris,  §  6  (Vol.  XVII. 
50) ;  Sesame  and  Lilies,  §  70  (Vol.  XVIII.  pp.  123-124)  ;  Queen  of  the  Air,  §  168 
1.  XIX.  pp.  418-414)  ;  and  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  91  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  439).] 
*  [See  above,  p.  283.] 


324  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


you  to-day  the  portrait  of  a  Tuscan  Sibyl,^ — such  as  ther  ti 

have  been,  and  still  are.  She  herself  is  still  living;  he  ^ 
portrait  is  the  first  drawing  illustrating  the  book  of  th 

legends  of  the  peasantry  of  Val  d'Arno,  which  I  obtains  I 

possession  of  in  Florence  last  year ;  of  which  book  I  wi]J  I 
now  read  you  part  of  the  preface,  in  which  the  authores 

gives  you  the  story  of  the  life  of  this  Etrurian  Sibyl : —  d 

.     ^     .          .          .    ^       .                   I  |« 

85.  There  are  just  one  or  two  points  I  want  you  t  ^ 

note  in  this  biography,  specially.                                     I  iflu 

The  girl  is  put,  in  her  youth,  to  three  kinds  of  nobl! 

work.    She  is  a  shepherdess,  like  St.  Genevieve;  a  spinne  f 

and  knitter,  like  Queen  Bertha ;  ^  chiefly  and  most  singi  B 

larly,  she  is  put  to  help  her  father  in  the  pontifical  ai  ^ 

of  bridge-building.*  Gymnastic  to  purpose,  you  observe  ^ 
In  the  last,  or  last  but  one,  number  of  your  favourite  En^ 

lish  chronicle,  the  proud  mother  says  of  her  well-traine,  lin 

daughters,  that  there  is  not  one   who   could  not  knoc  1 

down  her  own  father:^  here  is  a  strong  daughter  who  cai  jtlie 

help  her  father — a  Grace  Darling  of  the  rivers  instead  (  to 

the  sea.®  M 

These  are  the  first  three  things  to  be  noted  of  he  u 

Next,  the  material  of  her  education, — not  in  words,  but  i  r 
thoughts,  and  the  greatest  of  thoughts.    You  continual! 

hear  that  Roman  Catholics  are  not  allowed  to  read  th  | 

Bible.  Here  is  a  little  shepherdess  who  has  it  in  he  v 
heart. 

Next,  the  time  of  her  inspiration, — at  her  wedding  feast 

as  in  the   beginning  of  her  Master's  ministry,  at  Canj  i| 

Here  is  right  honour  put  upon  marriage;  and,  in  spite  (  il 

^  [See  frontispiece  to  the   Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany  (Plate  II.,  p.  88, 
Vol.  XXXII.).] 

2  [See  Vol.  XXXII.  pp.  67,  58,  for  the  passage  here  read  by  Ruskin  ("Beatri 
was  the  daughter  .  .  .  same  name  as  herself").] 
^  [See  below,  p.  403.] 
*  [See  above,  p.  195.] 

5  [See,  in  Punch  for  May  19,  1883  (vol.  84,  p.  234),  a  picture  by  Du  Maurie 
^' A  Felt  Want."] 

«  [Grace  Darling  (1815-1842),  famous  for  her  heroic  rescues,  was  the  daught 
of  a  lighthouse-keeper  on  the  Farne  Islands.] 


; 


III.  CLASSIC  SCHOOLS  OF  PAINTING  325 


te  efforts  made  to  disturb  her  household  peace,  it  was  en- 
fely  blessed  to  her  in  her  children :  nor  to  her  alone,  but 
i  us,  and  to  myriads  with  us  ;  for  her  second  son,  Angelo, 
i  the  original  of  the  four  drawings  of  St.  Christopher 
nich  illustrate  the  central  poem  in  Miss  Alexander's  book  ;^ 
^  d  which  are,  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge,  the  most 
lautiful  renderings  of  the  legend  hitherto  attained  by 
liigious  imagination. 

86.  And  as  you  dwell  on  these  portraits  of  a  noble 
''.iscan  peasant,  the  son  of  a  noble  Christian  mother — learn 
tis  farther  and  final  distinction  between  the  greatest  art 

<  past  time,  and  that  which  has  become  possible  now  and 
i  future. 

The  Greek,  I  said,^  pourtrayed  the  body  and  the  mind 
(  man,  glorified  in  mortal  war.  But  to  us  is  given  the 
tsk  of  holier  portraiture,  of  the  countenance  and  the  heart 

<  man,  glorified  by  the  peace  of  God. 

87.  Whether  Francesca's  book  is  to  be  eventually  kept 
Igether  or  distributed  I  do  not  yet  know.^  But  if  dis- 
i  buted,  the  drawings  of  St.  Christopher  must  remain  in 
<iford,  being,  as  I  have  said,  the  noblest  statements  I 
I  ve  ever  seen  of  the  unchangeable  meaning  of  this  Ford 
(  ours,  for  all  who  pass  it  honestly,  and  do  not  contrive 
i  se  traverse  for  themselves  over  a  widened  Magdalen 
]idge.*  That  ford,  gentlemen,  for  ever, — know  what  you 
iay> — hope  what  you  may,— believe  or  deny  what  you 
lay, — you  have  to  pass  barefoot.  For  it  is  a  baptism  as 
idl  as  a  ford,  and  the  waves  of  it,  as  the  sands,  are  holy, 
'our  youthful  days  in  this  place  are  to  you  the  dipping  of 
]>ur  feet  in  the  brim  of  the  river,  which  is  to  be  manfully 
f^mmed  by  you  all  your  days;  not  drifted  with, — nor 
1yed  upon.    Fallen  leaves  enough  it  is  strewn  with,  of 

^  [In  all,  there  are  five  drawings  of  St.  Christopher,  but  one  of  them  was 
It  shown  at  Oxford:  see  Plates  XX.-XXIV.  in  the  Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany 
{ol  XXXII.  pp.  206  seq.] 

2  [See  above,  §§  62,  78  (pp.  308,  319).] 

'  [On  this  subject,  see  Vol.  XXXII.  pp.  44-47.] 

*  [The  Bridge  had  recently  been  widened  and  rebuilt,  with  some  very  unsightly 
^s-lamps,  which  caused  considerable  outcry  at  the  time.] 


326  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


the  flowers  of  the  forest ;  moraine  enough  it  bears,  of  th 
ruin  of  the  brave.  Your  task  is  to  cross  it ;  your  door 
may  be  to  go  down  with  it,  to  the  depths  out  of  whici 
there  is  no  crying.  Traverse  it,  staff  in  hand,  and  wit 
loins  girded,  and  with  whatsoever  law  of  Heaven  yo, 
know,  for  your  light.^  On  the  other  side  is  the  Promisei 
Land,  the  Land  of  the  Leal.^ 

^  [Psalms  cxxx.  1  ;  Exodus  xii.  11,  etc.  ;  Psalms  cxix.  105.] 
2  [See  clavigera,  Letter  82  (Vol.  XXVII.  p.  601).] 


LECTURE  IV 


FAIRY  LAND 

MRS.  ALLINGHAM  AND  KATE  GREENAWAY 
(Delivered  26tk  and  SOtk  May  1883) 

^.  We  have  hitherto  been  considering  the  uses  of  legen- 
cry  art  to  grown  persons,  and  to  the  most  learned  and 
jwerful  minds.  To-day  I  will  endeavour  to  note  with  you 
s  ne  of  the  least  controvertible  facts  respecting  its  uses  to 
c  ildren ;  and  to  obtain  your  consent  to  the  main  general 
jinciples  on  which  I  believe  it  should  be  offered  to  them. 

Here,  however,  I  enter  on  ground  where  1  must  guard 
crefuUy  against  being  misled  by  my  own  predilections, 
gd  in  which  also  the  questions  at  issue  are  extremely 
cilicult,  because  most  of  them  new.  It  is  only  in  recent 
taes  that  pictures  have  become  familiar  means  of  house- 
lld  pleasure  and  education:  only  in  our  own  days — nay, 
(en  within  the  last  ten  years  of  those, — that  the  means 
(  illustration  by  colour-printing  have  been  brought  to  per- 
i^tion,  and  art  as  exquisite  as  we  need  desire  to  see  it, 
]iced,  if  our  school-boards  choose  to  have  it  so,  within 
1e  command  of  every  nursery  governess. 

89.  Having  then  the  colour-print,  the  magic-lantern, 
1e  electric-light,  and  the — to  any  row  of  ciphers— magni- 
iing  lens,  it  becomes  surely  very  interesting  to  consider 
^hat  we  may  most  wisely  represent  to  children  by  means 
J  potent,  so  dazzling,  and,  if  we  will,  so  faithful.  I  said 
jst  now  that  I  must  guard  carefully  against  being  misled 
1^  my  own  predilections,  because  having  been  myself 
b  ought  up  principally  on  fairy  legends,^  my  first  impulse 
ould  be  to  insist  upon  every  story  we  tell  to  a  child 

^  [Principally,  but  not  wholly  :  see  below,  §  102  (p.  335).    And  compare  PrtBteritUy 


328  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


being  untrue,  and  every  scene  we  paint  for  it,  impossible  * 

But  I  have  been  led,  as  often  before  confessed,^  gravely  Ui  t 

doubt  the  expediency  of  some  parts  of  my  early  training;  i 
and  perhaps  some  day  may  try  to  divest  myself  wholly 

for  an  hour,  of  these  dangerous  recollections  ;  and  prepan  ^ 

a  lecture  for  you  in  which  I  will  take  Mr.  Gradgrind  or  ^ 

his  own  terms,^  and  consider  how  far,  making  it  a  rule  thai'  ^ 

we  exhibit  nothing  but  facts,  we  could  decorate  our  pagej;  ^ 

of  history,  and  illuminate  the  slides  of  our  lantern,  in  s  i 

manner  still  sufficiently  attractive  to  childish  taste.    Foi  ^ 

indeed  poor  Louise  and  her  brother,  kneeling  to  peep  undei;  *' 

the  fringes  of  the  circus-tent,  are  as  much  in  search  afteil  I 

facts  as  the  most  scientific  of  us  all !    A  circus-rider,  with!  » 

his  hoop,  is  as  much  a  fact  as  the  planet  Saturn  and  his  i 

ring,  and  exemplifies  a  great  many  more  laws  of  motionj  i 

both  moral  and  physical ;  nor  are  any  descriptions  of  the  ^ 

Valley  of  Diamonds,  or  the  Lake  of  the  Black  Islands]  i 

in  the  Arabia?!  Nights,^  anything  like  so  wonderful  as  the  J 

scenes  of  California  and  the  Rocky  Mountains  which  you  « 

may  find  described  in  the  April  Number  of  the  Cornhili  i 

Magazine,  under  the  heading  of  *'  Early  Spring  in  Cali-  I 

fornia " ;  ^  and  may  see  represented  with  most  sincere  and  i 

passionate  enthusiasm  by  the  American  landscape  painter,  ' 

Mr.  Moran,  in  a  survey  lately  published  by  the  Government  i 

of  the  United  States.^  i 

^  [See^  for  instance^  Forfi  Clavigera,  Letter  54  (reprinted  in  Prceterita,  i.  §  54).'  * 

^  [See  the  opening  words  of  Hard  Times:  ^^Now,  what  I  want  is,  Facts.    Teach  j 
these  boys  and  girls  nothing  but  Facts."    For  the  circus-tent,  see  ch.  iii.  There 
are  other  references  to  the  book  in  Vol.  XV.  p.  371,  and  Vol.  XVII.  p.  31.] 

^  [^^The  Valley  of  Diamonds"  was  the  title  (taken  from  the  story  of  Sinbad) 
of  Lecture  i.  in  Ruskin's  Ethics  of  the  Dust  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  209).    For  the  Lake  ' 
of  the  Black  Islands,  see  "Th.e  Story  of  the  Fisherman,"  passing  into  that  of 
^^The  Story  of  the  Young  King  of  the  Black  Islands"  (vol.  i.  pp.  91  seq.  in  Lane's 
edition).] 

*  [Vol.  47,  pp.  410-423.] 

5  [Views  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  are  included  among  fifteen  water-colour 
sketches  by  Thomas  Moran,  finely  reproduced  by  chromo-lithography,  issued  at 
Boston  (L.  Prang  &  Co.)  in  1876,  under  the  title'  The  Yellowstone  National  Park, 
and  the  Mountain  Regions  of  Portions  of  Idaho,  Nevada,  Colorado,  and  Utah,  described 
by  Professor  T.  F.  Hayden,  Geologist-in-Charge  of  the  United  States  Government 
Exploring  Expedition  .  .  .  illustrated,  etc.  The  publication  was  not  ofiicial,  but 
Professor  Hayden  refers  to  Moran's  coloured  sketches  as  supplementing  the  ofiicial 
survey.] 


■ 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


329 


90.  Scenes  majestic  as  these,  pourtrayed  with  mere  and 
J  re  fidelity  by  such  scientific  means  as  I  have  referred  to, 
\)uld  form  a  code  of  geographic  instruction  beyond  all 
te  former  grasp  of  young  people;  and  a  source  of  enter- 
t  nment, — I  had  nearly  said,  and  most  people  who  had  not 
ntched  the  minds  of  children  carefully,  might  think, — 
i  jxhaustible.  Much,  indeed,  I  should  myself  hope  from 
i  but  by  no  means  an  infinitude  of  entertainment.  For 
i  is  quite  an  inexorable  law  of  this  poor  human  nature  of 
c  rs,  that  in  the  development  of  its  healthy  infancy,  it  is 
J  it  by  Heaven  under  the  absolute  necessity  of  using  its 
iiagination  as  well  as  its  lungs  and  its  legs; — that  it  is 
f  eed  to  develop  its  power  of  invention,  as  a  bird  its 
fithers  of  flight;  that  no  toy  you  can  bestow  will  super- 
sle  the  pleasure  it  has  in  JPancying  something  that  isn't 
tare;  and  the  most  instructive  histories j  you  can  compile 
i  '  it  of  the  wonders  of  the  world  will  never  conquer  the 
i:erest  of  the  tale  which  a  clever  child  can  tell  itself, 
(ncerning  the  shipwreck  of  a  rose-leaf  in  the  shallows  of 
{ rivulet.^ 

91.  One  of  the  most  curious  proofs  of  the  need  to 
(ildren  of  this  exercise  of  the  inventive  and  believing 
]  wer, — the  besoin  de  croire,  which  precedes  the  besom 
(limer, — you  will  find  in  the  way  you  destroy  the  vitality 
(  a  toy  to  them,  by  bringing  it  too  near  the  imitation  of 
le.  You  never  find  a  child  make  a  pet  of  a  mechanical 
louse  that  runs  about  the  floor — of  a  poodle  that  yelps — 
(  a  tumbler  who  jumps  upon  wires.  The  child  falls  in 
Ive  with  a  quiet  thing,  with  an  ugly  one — ^nay,  it  may  be, 
vth  one,  to  us,  totally  devoid  of  meaning.  My  little — 
( er-so-many-times-grand — cousin,  Lily,^  took  a  bit  of  stick 
vth  a  round  knob  at  the  end  of  it  for  her  doll  one  day; — 
iirsed  it  through  any  number  of  illnesses  with  the  most 
lader  solicitude;  and,  on  the  deeply-important  occasion  of 

^  [In  the  lecture  as  delivered^  "...  the  shipwreck  of  a  walnut-shell  in  a 
f^ter"  {Pall  Mall  Gazette,  May  28).] 

^  [Miss  Lily  Severn,  elder  daughter  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn ;  strictly, 
3  skin's  second  cousin  once  removed.] 


880 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


its  having  a  new  night-gown  made  for  it,  bent  down  hei 
mother's  head  to  receive  the  confidential  and  timid  whispe] 
— "  Mamma,  perhaps  it  had  better  have  no  sleeves,  becausd 
as  Bibsey  has  no  arms,  she  mightn't  like  it."^  1 

92.  I  must  take  notice  here,  but  only  in  passing, — th< 
subject  being  one  to  be  followed  out  afterwards  in  studying 
more  grave  branches  of  art, — that  the  human  mind  in  it' 
full  energy  having  thus  the  power  of  believing  simply  whai 
it  likes,  the  responsibilities  and  the  fatalities  attached  t( 
the  effort  of  Faith  are  greater  than  those  belonging  t( 
bodily  deed,  precisely  in  the  degree  of  their  voluntariness! 
A  man  can't  always  do  what  he  likes,  but  he  can  alway 
fancy  what  he  likes ;  and  he  may  be  forced  to  do  wha 
he  doesn't  like,  but  he  can't  be  forced  to  fancy  what 
doesn't  like.  * 

93.  I  use  for  the  moment,  the  word  "to  fancy"  instea( 
of  **to  believe,"  because  the  whole  subject  of  Fidelit) 
and  Infidelity  has  been  made  a  mere  mess  of  quarrels  anc 
blunders  by  our  habitually  forgetting  that  the  proper  powei 
of  Faith  is  to  trust  without  evidence,  not  with  evidence 
You  perpetually  hear  people  say,  "I  won't  believe  this  oi 
that  unless  you  give  me  evidence  of  it."  Why,  if  yot 
give  them  evidence  of  it,  they  know  it, — they  don't  believe 
any  more.  A  man  doesn't  believe  there's  any  danger  ir 
nitro-glycerine ;  at  last  he  gets  his  parlour-door  blown  int( 
the  next  street.  He  is  then  better  informed  on  the  sub-, 
ject,  but  the  time  for  behef  is  past.  ' 

94?.  Only,  observe,  I  don't  say  that  you  can  fancy  whal 
you  like,  to  the  degree  of  receiving  it  for  truth.  Heaver 
forbid  we  should  have  a  power  such  as  that,  for  it  would 
be  one  of  voluntary  madness.  But  we  are,  in  the  most 
natural  and  rational  health,  able  to  foster  the  fancy,  up 
to  the  point  of  influencing  our  feelings  and  character  in 
the  strongest  way;  and  for  the  strength  of  that  healthy 
imaginative  faculty,  and  all  the  blending  of  the  good  and 

*  [For  another  reference  to  this  incident,  see  Fors  C/avigera,  Letter  95  (Vol.  XXIX. 
p.  508).] 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


331 


gace,  "richiesto  al  vero  ed  al  trastuUo,"  we  are  wholly 
riponsible.  We  may  cultivate  it  to  what  brightness  we 
coose,  merely  by  living  in  a  quiet  relation  with  natural 
ejects  and  great  and  good  people,  past  or  present;  and 

may  extinguish  it  to  the  last  snufF,  merely  by  living  in 
%wn,  and  reading  the  Times  every  morning. 

"  We  are  scarcely  sufficiently  conscious,"  says  Mr.  King- 
lie,  with  his  delicate  precision  of  serenity  in  satire,  "  scarcely 
sfficiently  conscious  in  England,  of  the  great  debt  we  owe 
t  the  wise  and  watchful  press  which  presides  over  the  forma- 
tn  of  our  opinions;  and  which  brings  about  this  splendid 
imlt,  namely,  that  in  matters  of  belief,  the  humblest  of 
I  are  lifted  up  to  the  level  of  the  most  sagacious,  so  that 
I  illy  a  simple  Cornet  in  the  Blues  is  no  more  likely  to 
ctertain  a  foolish  belief  about  ghosts,  or  witchcraft,  or 
gy  other  supernatural  topic,  than  the  Lord  High  Chan- 
(Ilor,  or  the  Leader  of  the  House  of  Commons."^ 

95.  And  thus,  at  the  present  day,  for  the  education  or 
te  extinction  of  the  Fancy,  we  are  absolutely  left  to  our 
(oice.  For  its  occupation,  not  wholly  so,  yet  in  a  far 
J  eater  measure  than  we  know.  Mr.  Wordsworth  speaks 
(  it  as  only  impossible  to  "have  sight  of  Proteus  rising 

1  )m  the  sea,"  because  the  world  is  too  much  with  us ;  ^ 

2  50  Mr.  Kinglake,  though,  in  another  place,  he  calls  it 
*i  vain  and  heathenish  longing  to  be  fed  with  divine 
(unsels  from  the  lips  of  Pallas  Athene,"^ — yet  is  far 
I  ppier  than  the  most  scientific  traveller  could  be  in  a 
ttgonometric  measurement,  when  he  discovers  that  Nep- 
1.ne  could  really  have  seen  Troy  from  the  top  of  Samo- 
1race:*  and  I  believe  that  we  should  many  of  us  find 
i  an  extremely  wholesome  and  useful  method  of  treating 

*  Dante,  Purg.  xiv.  93. 


^  [Eothen,  ch.  viii.  (p.  147,  ed.  2).] 

^  [For  other  references  to  Wordsworth's  sonnet,  "The  world  is  too  much  with 
"  see  Vol.  V.  p.  323,  and  Vol.  XI.  p.  130.] 
^  [Eothen,  ch.  vii.  (p.  104).] 

*  [Ihid.^  ch.  iv.  (pp.  64,  65).    Neptune  should  be  Jove.] 


332  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND  , 

our  ordinary  affairs,  if  before  deciding,  even  upon  verl 
minor  points  of  conduct  admitting  of  prudential  and  cor 
scientious  debate,  we  were  in  the  habit  of  imagining  tha 
Pallas  Athene  was  actually  in  the  room  with  us,  or  a 
least  outside  the  window  in  the  form  of  a  swallow,^  an< 
permitted  us,  on  the  condition  always  of  instant  obedience 
to  ask  her  advice  upon  the  matter. 

96.  Here  ends  my  necessary  parenthesis,  with  its  sus 
picion  of  preachment,^  for  which  I  crave  pardon,  and 
return  to  my  proper   subject  of  to-day, — the  art  whicl 
intends  to  address  only  childish  imagination,  and  whos< 
object  is  primarily  to  entertain  with  grace. 

With  grace : — I  insist  much  on  this  latter  word.  W 
may  allow  the  advocates  of  a  material  philosophy  to  insis 
that  every  wild-weed  tradition  of  fairies,  gnomes,  and  sylph:j 
should  be  well  ploughed  out  of  a  child's  mind  to  preparl 
it  for  the  good  seed  of  the  Gospel  of — Disgrsice:  but  m 
defence  can  be  offered  for  the  presentation  of  these  ideal 
to  its  mind  in  a  form  so  vulgarized  as  to  defame  and  pol 
lute  the  masterpieces  of  former  literature.  It  is  perfectl; 
easy  to  convince  the  young  proselyte  of  science  that  I 
cobweb  on  the  top  of  a  thistle  cannot  be  commanded  t( 
catch  a  honey-bee  for  him,^  without  introducing  a  danc< 
of  ungainly  fairies  on  the  site  of  the  cabstand  under  thl 
Westminster  clock  tower,  or  making  the  Queen  of  thenj 
fall  in  love  with  the  sentry  on  guard.^  \ 

97.  With  grace,  then,  assuredly, — and  I  think  we  majl 
add  also,  with  as  much  seriousness  as  an  entirely  fictitioul 
subject  may  admit  of, — seeing  that  it  touches  the  bordei 
of  that  higher  world  which  is  not  fictitious.  We  are  al 
perhaps  too  much  in  the  habit  of  thinking  the  scene! 
of  burlesque  in  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  exemplar) 
of  Shakespeare's  general  treatment  of  fairy  character:  w( 

1  [Odyssey,  xxii.  240  :  see  Love's  Meinie,  §  79  (Vol.  XXV.  p.  71).] 

2  [See  above,  §  20,  p.  279.] 

*  [Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  Act  iv.  sc.  1.] 

*  [The  description  is  of  the  scene  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  act  of  Gilber 
and  Sullivan's  lolanthe,  which  had  been  produced  (November  28,  1882)  shortl) 
before  the  time  of  Ruskiu's  lecture.] 


i 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


333 


<ould  always  remember  that  he  places  the  most  beautiful 
Dids  descriptive  of  virgin  purity  which  English  poetry 
]  assesses,  in  the  mouth  of  the  Fairy  King,  and  that  to  the 
]Drd  of  Fancies  he  entrusts  the  praise  of  the  conquest  of 
Jincy  — 

"  In  maiden  meditation, — Fancy  free."  ^ 

Jill  less  should  we  forget  the  function  of  household 
I  nediction,  attributed  to  them  always  by  happy  national 
<  perstition,  and  summed  in  the  closing  lines  of  the  same 

"With  this  field-dew  consecrate, 
Every  fairy  take  his  gait ; 
And  each  several  chamber  bless. 
Through  this  palace,  with  sweet  peace." 

98.  With  seriousness  then,— but  only,  I  repeat,  such  as 
(tirely  fictitious  elements  properly  admit  of.  The  general 
I  ace  and  sweetness  of  Scott's  moorland  fairy,  ''The  White 
]ady,"  failed  of  appeal  to  the  general  justice  of  public  taste, 
1  cause  in  two  places  he  fell  into  the  exactly  opposite 
(rors  of  unbecoming  jest,  and  too  far- venturing  solemnity, 
'le  ducking  of  the  Sacristan  offended  even  his  most  loving 
laders;  but  it  offended  them  chiefly  for  a  reason  of  which 
ley  were  in  great  part  unconscious,  that  the  jest  is  carried 
(  t  in  the  course  of  the  charge  with  which  the  fairy  is 
1o  gravely  entrusted,  to  protect,  for  Mary  of  Avenel,  her 
]  other's  Bible.^ 

99.  It  is  of  course  impossible,  in  studying  questions  of 
lis  kind,  to  avoid  confusion  between  what  is  fit  in  litera- 
ire  and  in  art;  the  leading  principles  are  the  same  in 
j)th,  but  of  course  much  may  be  allowed  to  the  narrator 
hich  is  impossible  or  forbidden  to  the  draughtsman.  And 
necessarily  take  examples  chiefly  from  literature,  because 
le  greatest  masters  of  story  have  never  disdained  the 
ayfuUy  supernatural   elements   of  fairy-tale,  while   it  is 

^  [Midsummer  Night's  Bream,  Act  ii.  sc.  2.    The  line  is  quoted  also  in  Vol.  XXIV» 
68,  and  the  closing  lines  of  the  play  are  quoted  in  Vol.  VI.  p.  445.] 
^  [See  chaps,  v.,  vii.,  viii.,  ix.,  and  others  of  The  Monastery.'] 


334 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


extremely  rare  to  find  a  good  painter  condescending  t« 
them, — or,  I  should  rather  say,  contending  with  them,  ih 
task  being  indeed  one  of  extreme  difficulty.  I  believe  Si! 
Noel  Paton's  pictures  of  the  Court  of  Titania,  and  Fair' 
Raid,^  are  all  we  possess  in  which  the  accomplished  skill  o' 
painting  has  been  devoted  to  fairy-subject;  and  my  impres 
sion  when  I  saw  the  former  picture — the  latter  I  griev( 
not  yet  to  have  seen — was  that  the  artist  intended  rathe 
to  obtain  leave  by  the  closeness  of  ocular  distance  to  displa^, 
the  exquisite  power  of  minute  delineation,  which  he  felt  ii 
historical  painting  to  be  inapplicable,  than  to  arrest,  eithe 
in  his  own  mind  or  the  spectator's,  even  a  momentar} 
credence  in  the  enchantment  of  fairy-wand  and  fairy-ring. 

100.  And  within  the  range  of  other  art  which  I  car 
call  to  mind,  touching  on  the  same  ground, — or  rather 
breathing  in  the  same  air, — it  seems  to  me  a  sorrowful  anc 
somewhat  unaccountable  law  that  only  grotesque  or  terribk 
fancies  present  themselves  forcibly  enough,  in  these  admit- 
tedly fabling  states  of  the  imagination,  to  be  noted  with 
the  pencil.  For  instance,  without  rating  too  highly  the 
inventive  powers  of  the  old  German  outline-draughtsman 
Retsch,  we  cannot  but  attribute  to  him  a  very  real  gift  o1 
making  visibly  terrible  such  legend  as  that  of  the  ballad  oi 
Leonora,  and  interpreting,  with  a  wild  aspect  of  veracity, 
the  passages  of  sorcery  in  Faust.^  But  the  drawing  which 
I  possess  by  his  hand,  of  the  Genius  of  Poetry  riding 
upon  a  swan,  could  not  be  placed  in  my  school  with  any 
hope  of  deepening  your  impression  either  of  the  beauty  o| 
swans,  or  the  dignity  of  genii. 

101.  You  must,  however,  always  carefully  distinguish 
these  states  of  gloomy  fantasy,  natural,  though  too  often 
fatal,  to  men  of  real  imagination, — the  spectra  which  appear, 
Avhether  they  desire  it  or  not, — to  men  like  Orcagna,  Diirer, 
Blake,  and  Alfred  Rethel, — and  dwelt  upon  by  them,  in 

1  [See  Vol.  XIV.  p.  50  and  n.]  .J 
^  [His  outline  illustrations  to  Faust  may  be  seen  in  an  edition  of  J.  Birch  s 
translation  (1839) ;  and  see  Retzsch's  Outlines  to  Burgers  Ballads  (Leipsic  and  London, 
1840).    For  other  references  to  Retsch,  see  Vol.  IV.  pp.  259,  871.]  | 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


335 


ie  hope  of  producing  some  moral  impression  of  salutary 
ire  by  their  record — as  in  Blake's  Book  of  Job,  in  Diirer's 
.pocalypse,  in  Kethel's  Death  the  Avenger  and  Death  the 
l  iend,^ — and  more  nobly  in  his  grand  design  of  Barbarossa 
(tering  the  grave  of  Charlemagne; — carefully,  I  say,  you 
last  distinguish  this  natural  and  lofty  phase  of  visionary 
trror,  from  the  coarse  delight  in  mere  pain  and  crisis  of 
(Bger,  which,  in  our  infidel  art  and  literature  for  the 
i>ung,  fills  our  books  of  travel  with  pictures  of  alligators 
shallowing  children,  hippopotami  upsetting  canoes  full  of 
jv^ages,  bears  on  their  hind-legs  doing  battle  with  northern 
1  vigators,  avalanches  burying  Alpine  villages,  and  the  like, 
i  the  principal  attractions  of  the  volume ;  not,  in  the 
jarality  of  cases,  without  vileness  of  exaggeration  which 
Mounts  to  misleading  falsehood — unless  happily  pushed  to 
ie  point  where  mischief  is  extinguished  by  absurdity.  In 
!  rahan's  "  Magazine  for  the  Youth  of  all  Ages,"  for  June 
;  79,  at  page  328,  you  will  find  it  related,  in  a  story  pro- 
])sed  for  instruction  in  scientific  natural  history,  that  "the 
igitives  saw  an  enormous  elephant  cross  the  clearing,  sur- 
lunded  by  ten  tigers,  some  clinging  to  its  back,  and  others 
leping  alongside."^ 

102.  I  may  in  this  place,  I  think,  best  introduce — though 
l  ain  parenthetically — the  suggestion  of  a  healthy  field  for 
1  e  labouring  scientific  fancy  which  remains  yet  unexhausted, 
J  id  I  believe  inexhaustible, — that  of  the  fable,  expanded 
ito  narrative,  which  gives  a  true  account  of  the  life  of 
Jiimals,  supposing  them  to  be  endowed  with  human  intel- 
l^ence,  directed  to  the  interests  of  their  animal  life.  I 
lid  just  now^  that  I  had  been  brought  up  upon  fairy 
l^ends,  but  I  must  gratefully  include,  under  the  general 
Tile  of  these,  the  stories  in  Evenings  at  Home  of  The 
'  ransmigrations  of  Indur,  The  Discontented  Squirrel,  The 

^  [For  other  references — to  Blake's  Book  of  J  oh,  see  Vol.  XXV.  p.  515  n.  ; 
1  Durer's  Apocalypse,  Vol.  XIX.  p.  260,  and  Vol.  XXI.  p.  134  ;  to  Rethel's  Death, 
'1.  XV.  p.  223.] 

2  [Quoted  from  a  story  called  "The  Serpent-Charmer,"  by  Louis  Rousselet,  in 
''ohans  Grand  Annual  for  the  Young,'] 

3  [See  above,  §  89  (p.  328).] 


336 


THE  AKT  OF  ENGLAND 


Travelled  Ant,  The  Cat  and  her  Children,  and  Litt 
Fido;^  and  with  these,  one  now  quite  lost,  but  which  ' 
am  minded  soon  to  reprint  for  my  younger  pupils — Tb 
History  of  a  Field-Mouse,^  which  in  its  pretty  detail  is  n 
less  amusing,  and  much  more  natural,  than  the  town  an 
country  mice  of  Horace  and  Pope,^— classic,  in  the  bej 
sense,  though  these  will  always  be. 

103.  There  is  the  more  need  that  some  true  and  pui 
examples  of  fable  in  this  kind  should  be  put  within  th 
reach  of  children,  because  the  wild  efforts  of  weak  writei 
to  increase  their  incomes  at  Christmas,  and  the  unscrupuloq 
encouragement  of  them  by  competing  booksellers,  fill  or 
nurseries  with  forms  of  rubbish  which  are  on  the  one  sid 
destructive  of  the  meaning  of  all  ancient  tradition,  an 
on  the  other,  reckless  of  every  really  interesting  truth  i 
exact  natural  history.  Only  the  other  day,  in  examinin 
the  mixed  contents  of  a  somewhat  capacious  nursery  bool 
case,  the  first  volume  I  opened  was  a  fairy  tale  in  whic 
the  benevolent  and  moral  fairy  drove  a  matchless  pair  c 
white  cockatrices."  I  might  take  up  all  the  time  yet  lei 
for  this  lecture  in  exposing  to  you  the  mingled  folly  ani 
mischief  in  those  few  words ; — the  pandering  to  the  fini 
notion  of  vulgar  children  that  all  glory  consists  in  drivinj 
a  matchless  pair  of  something  or  other, — and  the  impliej 
ignorance  in  which  only  such  a  book  could  be  presented 
to  any  children,  of  the  most  solemn  of  scriptural  promise 
to  them, — ''the  weaned  child  shall  lay  his  hand  on  th» 
cockatrice'  den."* 

104.  And  the  next  book  I  examined  was  a  series  of  stork 
imported  from  Japan,"^  most  of  them  simply  sanguinary  an 

*  Macmillan,  1871.^ 

1  [See  Eceningii  at  Home ;  or.  The  Juvenile  Budget  Opened,  6  vols.,  1792  ;  vol.  i 
p.  1 ;  vol.  i.  p.  43;  vol.  v.  p.  101 ;  vol.  i.  p.  105  (^^^he  History  of  a  Cat");  aDJ 
vol.  i.  p.  119  (^^The  Little  Dog").] 

2  [Little  Downy,  or  the  History  of  a  Field  Mouse:  a  Moral  Tale  (1822).] 
2   Horace^  Satires,  ii.  Q,  and  Pope's  Imitation.] 

*   Isaiah  xii.  8.]  i 
5  [Tales  of  Old  Japan,  by  A.  B.  Mitford  (afterwards  Lord  Redesdale),  with  illui| 
trations  by  Japanese  artists.    The  "  introduction  "  is  not  the  author's  introductio 
to  the  volume,  ijut  the  opening  of  the  story  of  the  Ape  and  the  Crab :  see  p.  2G4  , 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


337 


lithsome/  but  one  or  two  pretending  to  be  zoological — as, 
jr  instance,  that  of  the  Battle  of  the  Ape  and  the  Crab, 
(  which  it  is  said  in  the  introduction  that  "men  should 
1 7  it  up  in  their  hearts,  and  teach  it  as  a  profitable  lesson 
1  their  children."  In  the  opening  of  this  profitable  story, 
ie  crab  plants  a  persimmon  seed  in  his  garden"  (the 
iider  is  not  informed  what  manner  of  fruit  the  persimmon 
I  ay  be),  and  watches  the  growth  of  the  tree  which  springs 
i  nn  it  with  great  delight ;  being,  we  are  told  in  another 
iragraph,  "a  simple-minded  creature." 

105.  I  do  not  know  whether  this  conception  of  char- 
£ter  in  the  great  zodiacal  crustacean  is  supposed  to  be 
sentific  or  aesthetic, — but  I  hope  that  British  children  at 
ta  seaside  are  capable  of  inventing  somewhat  better  stories 
(  crabs  for  themselves ;  and  if  they  would  farther  know 
te  foreign  manners  of  the  sidelong-pacing  people,  let  me 

them  to  look  at  the  account  given  by  Lord  George 
(.mpbell,  in  his  Log  Letters  from  the  Challenger,^  of  his 
liding  on  the  island  of  St.  Paul,  and  of  the  manner  in 
\iich  the  quite  unsophisticated  crabs  of  that  locality  suc- 
Cided  first  in  stealing  his  fish-bait,  and  then  making  him 
le  his  temper,  to  a  degree  extremely  unbecoming  in  a 
litish  nobleman.  They  will  not,  after  the  perusal  of 
tit  piquant — or  perhaps  I  should  rather  say,  pin^ant, — 
iiTative,  be  disposed,  whatever  other  virtues  they  may 
pssess,  to  ascribe  to  the  obliquitous  nation  that  of  simpli- 
cy  of  mind. 

106.  I  have  no  time  to  dwell  longer  on  the  existing 


^1 


On  Japanese  art,  see  above^  §  56  (p.  271).] 

See  pp.  38,  39  of  the  edition  of  1876  :  ''^But  the  crabs,  those  cheeky,  exasper- 
g,  but  intensely  amusing  crabs !  .  .  .  How  hot  and  exasperated  I  got  chasing 
m ;  how  I  didn't  swear ;  how  sitting  down  I  soon  saw  one  eye,  and  then  one 
and  then  the  other  eye  appear  over  a  ledge  of  rock ;  how  it  watched  me  ; 
I  remained  breathless  and  still;  how  I  then  slily  drew  my  stick  along,  and 
,  finally,  I  frantically  struck  at  it;  and  how,  after  all,  I  only  stung  my  arm 
didn't  touch  the  crab  !  How,  after  cutting  nice  strips  off  a  fish  for  bait,  I  after 
5W  minutes  turned  round  and  found  it  all  stolen  ;  how  I  saw  the  robbers  dis- 
earing  into  cracks  ;  how  1  threw  my  stick  at  one,  and  struck  it  by  a  piece  of 
luck;  with  what  joy  1  threw  it  into  the  sea,  and  saw  the  fish  rush  at  and 
our  it.    Ha  !  revenge  is  sweet."] 

XXXIII.  Y 


338  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


fallacies  in  the  representation  either  of  the  fairy  or  thi 
animal  kingdoms.  I  must  pass  to  the  happier  duty  oj 
returning  thanks  for  the  truth  with  which  our  living! 
painters  have  drawn  for  us  the  lovely  dynasty  of  littlt 
creatures,  about  whose  reality  there  can  be  no  doubt;  anc) 
who  are  at  once  the  most  powerful  of  fairies,  and  the  mos 
amusing,  if  not  always  the  most  sagacious,  of  animals. 

In  my  last  lecture,  I  noted  to  you,  though  only  paren 
thetically,  the  singular  defect  in  Greek  art,  that  it  neve;j 
gives  you  any  conception  of  Greek  children.^  Neither — u] 
to  the  thirteenth  century — does  Gothic  art  give  you  an^ 
conception  of  Gothic  children ;  for,  until  the  thirteentl 
century,  the  Goth  was  not  perfectly  Christianized,^  and  stil 
thought  only  of  the  strength  of  humanity  as  admirabL; 
in  battle  or  venerable  in  judgment,  but  not  as  dutiful  iij 
peace,  nor  happy  in  simplicity.  | 

But  from  the  moment  when  the  spirit  of  Christianit;| 
had  been  entirely  interpreted  to  the  Western  races,  tht 
sanctity  of  womanhood  worshipped  in  the  Madonna,  ami 
the  sanctity  of  childhood  in  unity  with  that  of  Christ' 
became  the  light  of  every  honest  hearth,  and  the  joy  o 
every  pure  and  chastened  soul.    Yet  the  traditions  of  art 
subject,  and  the  vices  of  luxury  which  developed  themselve 
in  the  following  (fourteenth)  century,  prevented  the  mani 
festation  of  this  new  force  in  domestic  life  for  two  centurie 
more;  and  then  at  last  in  the  child  angels  of  Luca,  Min< 
of  Fesole,  I^uini,  Angelico,  Perugino,  and  the  first  days  o 
Raphael,  it  expressed  itself  as  the  one  pure  and  sacre< 
passion  which  protected  Christendom  from  the  ruin  of  th 
Renaissance. 

107.  Nor  has  it  since  failed ;  and  whatever  disgrace  o 
blame  obscured  the  conception  of  the  later  Flemish  aiK 
incipient  English  schools,  the  children,  whether  in  th 
pictures  of  Rubens,  Rembrandt,  Vandyke,  or  Sir  Joshua 
were  always  beautiful.     An  extremely  dark  period  indeec 

^  [See  above,  §  75,  p.  818.]  .  { 

2  [Compare  Val  d'Arno,  §  248  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  145).] 


IV,  FAIRY  LAND 


339 


fjlows,  leading  to  and  persisting  in  the  French  Revolution, 
a|d  issuing  in  the  merciless  manufacturing  fury,  which 
tj-day  grinds  children  to  dust  between  millstones,  and  tears 
tjam  to  pieces  on  engine-wheels, — against  which  rises  round 
,  Heaven  be  thanked,  again  the  protest  and  the  power 
Christianity,  restoring  the  fields  of  the  quiet  earth  to 
3  steps  of  her  infancy. 

108.  In  Germany,  this  protest,  I  believe,  began  with — 
is  at  all  events  perfectly  represented  by — the  Ludwig 
chter  I  have  so  often  named  ;  ^  in  France,  with  Edward 
ere,  whose  pictures  of  children  are  of  quite  immortal 
mty.  But  in  England  it  was  long  repressed  by  the 
rible  action  of  our  wealth,  compelling  our  painters  to 
)resent  the  children  of  the  poor  as  in  wickedness  or 
sery.  It  is  one  of  the  most  terrific  facts  in  all  the 
tory  of  British  art  that  Bewick  never  draws  children 
t  in  mischief.^ 

109.  I  am  not  able  to  say  with  whom,  in  Britain,  the 
ction  first  begins, — but  certainly  not  in  painting  until 
er  Wilkie,  in  all  whose  works  there  is  not  a  single 
imple  of  a  beautiful  Scottish  boy  or  girl.  I  imagine 
literature,  we  may  take  the  Cottar's  Saturday  Night " 
1  the  "toddlin'  wee  things"  as  the  real  beginning  of 
Id  benediction;  and  I  am  disposed  to  assign  in  England 
ich  value  to  the  widely  felt,  though  little  acknowledged, 
luence  of  an  authoress  now  forgotten  —  Mary  Russell 
tford.^    Her  village  children  in  the  Lowlands — in  the 

Ighlands,  the  Lucy  Grays  and  Alice  Fells  of  Words- 
^^|rth — brought  back  to  us  the  hues  of  Fairy  Land ;  and 
bough  long  by  Academic  art  denied  or  resisted,  at  last 
;  charm  is  felt  in  London  itself, — on  pilgrimage  in  whose 
mrbs  you  find  the  Little  Nells  and  boy  David  Copper- 
ds ;  and  in  the  heart  of  it.  Kit's  baby  brother  at  Astley's, 

[See  above,  pp.  285,  300;  and  for  Frere,  Vol.  XIV.  pp.  142,  174,  347.] 
[Compare  Ruskin's  notes  on  Bewick's  Birds  at  vol.  i.  p.  82  (Vol.  XXX. 
83).] 

[Compare  "My  First  Editor,"  §  15  (Vol.  XXXIV.  p.  103).] 


340 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


indenting  his  cheek  with  an  oyster-shell  to  the  admiratior 
of  all  beholders ;  ^  till  at  last,  bursting  out  like  one  of  the 
sweet  Surrey  fountains,  all  dazzling  and  pure,  you  hav( 
the  radiance  and  innocence  of  reinstated  infant  divinit) 
showered  again  among  the  flowers  of  English  meadows  bj 
Mrs.  AUingham  and  Kate  Greenaway. 

110.  It  has  chanced  strangely,  that  every  one  of  th( 
artists  to  whom  in  these  lectures  I  wished  chiefly  to  direc 
your  thoughts,  has  been  insufficiently,  or  even  disadvan 
tageously,  represented  by  his  work  in  the  exhibitions  o 
the  season.^  But  chiefly  I  have  been  disappointed  in  find 
ing  no  drawing  of  the  least  interest  by  Mrs.  AUingham  ii 
the  room  of  the  Old  Water- Colour  Society.  And  let  m( 
say  in  passing,  that  none  of  these  new  splendours  anr 
spaces  of  show  galleries,  with  attached  restaurants  to  sup 
port  the  cockney  constitution  under  the  trial  of  getting 
from  one  end  of  them  to  the  other,  will  in  the  least  m&h 
up  to  the  real  art-loving  public  for  the  loss  of  the  goo> 
fellowship  of  our  old  societies,  every  member  of  which  sen 
everything  he  had  done  best  in  the  year  into  the  room 
for  the  May  meetings :  shone  with  his  debited  measure  o 
admiration  in  his  accustomed  corner ;  supported  his  asso 
ciates  without  eclipsing  them ;  supplied  his  customers  with 
out  impoverishing  them ;  and  was  permitted  to  sell  a  pictur 
to  his  patron  or  his  friend,  without  paying  fifty  guinea 
commission  on  the  business  to  a  dealer.^ 

111.  Howsoever  it  may  have  chanced,  Mrs.  AUinghan 
has  nothing  of  importance  in  the  water-colour  room ;  an( 
I  am  even  sorrowfully  compelled  to  express  my  regre 
that  she  should  have  spent  unavailing  pains  in  finishing 
single  heads,  which  are  at  the  best  uninteresting  miniatures 
instead  of  fulfilling  her  true  gift,  and  doing  what  (in  Mis 

^  [See  ch.  xxxix.  of  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop.] 

2  [Compare  what  Ruskin  said  (in  the  lecture  as  delivered)  of  Leighton ;  abov( 
p.  318  n.] 

3  [Compare  what  Ruskin  says,  in  the  Notes  on  Prout  and  Hunt,  on  the  room  ( 
the  Old  Water-Colour  Society  "  in  Mays  of  long  ago,"  and  on  the  prices  of  thos 
days:  Vol.  XIV.  pp.  389-390,  403.] 


i 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


341 


exanders  words)  "the  Lord  made  her  for"^ — in  repre- 
iting  the  gesture,  character,  and  humour  of  charming 
ildren  in  country  landscapes.  Her  "Tea  Party,"  in  last 
ar's  exhibition,^  with  the  little  girl  giving  her  doll  its 
^ad  and  milk,  and  taking  care  that  she  supped  it  with 
^priety,  may  be  named  as  a  most  lovely  example  of  her 
ling  and  her  art ;  and  the  drawing  which  some  years  ago 
eted,  and  ever  since  has  retained,  the  public  admiration, 
'.he  two  deliberate  housewives  in  their  village  toy-shop, 
it  on  domestic  utilities  and  economies,  and  proud  in  the 
pisition  of  two  flat  irons  for  a  farthing,^ — has  become, 
1  rightly,  a  classic  picture,  which  will  have  its  place 
ong  the  memorable  things  in  the  art  of  our  time,  when 
ny  of  its  loudly  trumpeted  magnificences  are  remem- 
ed  no  more. 

112.  I  must  not  in  this  place  omit  mention,  with  sin- 
e  gratitude,  of  the  like  motives  in  the  paintings  of 
'.  Birket  Foster ;  but  with  regret  that  in  too  equal, 
.  incomplete,  realization  of  them,  mistaking,  in  many 
tances,  mere  spotty  execution  for  finish,  he  has  never 
en  the  high  position  that  was  open  to  him  as  an  illus- 
tor  of  rustic  life. 

And  I  am  grieved  to  omit  the  names  of  many  other 
ists  who  have  protested,  with  consistent  feeling,  against 
misery  entailed   on  the  poor  children   of  our  great 
^:  es, — by  painting   the  real  inheritance  of  childhood  in 
tl-  meadows  and  fresh  air.    But  the  graciousness  and  sen- 
tiient  of  them  all  is  enough  represented  by  the  hitherto 


tl 


[For  the  phrase,  see  Miss  Alexander's  Preface  to  Roadside  Soiigs  of  Tuscany 
XXXII.  p.  58).] 

["The  Children's  Tea/'  No.  248  in  the  Summer  Exhibition  of  1882  at  the 

Water-Colour  Society.  The  drawing  is  reproduced  in  colours  at  p.  86  of 
py  England  as  painted  by  Helen  Allingham,  by  Marcus  B.  Huish^  1903.J 

[This  is  the  drawing  called  "  Young  Customers  "  exhibited  at  the  Old  Water- 
)ur  Society  in  1875  :  see  Ruskin's  Academy  Notes  in  that  year  (Vol.  XIV, 
64).  The  picture  secured  her  election  as  a  member  of  the  Society  ;  it  was 
ided  on  a  black-and-white  drawing  made  to  illustrate  Mrs.  Ewing's  A  Flat  Iron 
a  Farthing.    It  is  reproduced  in  colours  at  p.  50  of  Happy  England.^ 

[For  other  references  to  him,  see  Vol.  XIV.  p.  299,  and  Vol.  XXII. 
92  n.] 


342 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


undreamt-of,  and,  in  its  range,  unrivalled,  fancy,  which 
now  re-establishing  throughout  gentle  Europe,  the  manne 
and  customs  of  fairyland. 

113.  I  may  best  indicate  to  you  the  grasp  which  tl 
genius  of  Miss  Kate  Greenaway  has  taken  upon  the  spirit  ; 
foreign  lands,  no  less  than  her  own,  by  translating  the  la; 
paragraph  of  the  entirely  candid,  and  intimately  observar' 
review  of  modern  English  art,  given  by  Monsieur  Erne] 
Chesneau,  in  his  small  volume.  La  Peinture  Anglaise}  i 
which  I  will  only  at  present  say,  that  any  of  my  pupil 
who  read  French  with  practice  enough  to  recognize  tl' 
finesse  of  it  in  exact  expression,  may  not  only  accept  \ 
criticism  as  my  own,  but  will  find  it  often  more  care! 
than  mine,  and  nearly  always  better  expressed ;  becau 
French  is  essentially  a  critical  language,  and  can  say  thini| 
in  a  sentence  which  it  would  take  half  a  page  of  Englii 
to  explain. 

114.  He  gives  first  a  quite  lovely  passage  (too  long  ^ 
introduce  now)  upon  the  gentleness  of  the  satire  of  Jol 
Leech,  as  opposed  to  the  bitter  malignity  of  former  caric 
ture.     Then  he  goes  on :  ^   "  The  great  softening  of  t) 
English  mind,  so  manifest  already  in  John  Leech,  shov 
itself  in  a  decisive  manner  by  the  enthusiasm  with  whi 
the  public  have  lately  received  the  designs  of  Mr.  Walt 
Crane,  Mr.  Caldecott,  and  Miss  Kate  Greenaway.    The  t\> 
first  named  artists  began  by  addressing  to   children  tl 
stories  of  Perrault  and  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  translat< 
and  adorned  for  them  in  a  dazzling  manner;  ...  an 
in  the  works  of  all  these  three  artists,   landscape  pla 
an  important  part ; — familiar  landscape,  very  English,  int( 
preted  with  a  'bonhomie  savante'"  (no  translating  tha, 
"spiritual,  decorative  in  the  rarest  taste, — strange  and  pi 
cious  adaptation  of  Etruscan  art,   Flemish  and  Japane.s 

^  [A  volume  (1883)  in  the  Bibliotheque  de  P Enseignement  des  Beaux-Arts.  1^ 
book  was  afterwards  (1885)  translated  into  English,  with  a  Preface  by  Ruskin  (:" 
which  see  Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

2  [Ruskin  translates  (with  some  re-arrangement)  from  pp.  832,  884,  835.] 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


34a 


aching,  together  with  the  perfect  interpretation  of  nature, 
>  incomparable  chords  of  colour  harmony.  .  .  .  These 
)wers  are  found  in  the  work  of  the  three,  but  Miss 
reenaway,  with  a  profound  sentiment  of  love  for  children, 
its  the  child  alone  on  the  scene,  companions  him  in  his 
vn  solitudes,  and  shows  the  infantine  nature  in  all  its 
iivete,  its  gaucherie,  its  touching  grace,  its  shy  alarm, 
s  discoveries,  ravishments,  embarrassments,  and  victories; 
le  stumbhngs  of  it  in  wintry  ways,  the  enchanted  smiles 
•  its  spring  time,  and  all  the  history  of  its  fond  heart  and 
iiiltless  egoism.  .  .  . 

"From  the  honest  but  fierce  laugh  of  the  coarse  Saxon, 
/'illiam  Hogarth,  to  the  delicious  smile  of  Kate  Green- 
vay,  there  has  past  a  century  and  a  half.  Is  it  the  same 
^ople  which  applauds  to-day  the  sweet  genius  and  tender 
j.alices  of  the  one,  and  which  applauded  the  bitter  genius 
id  slaughterous  satire  of  the  other  ?  After  all,  that  is 
)ssible, — the  hatred  of  vice  is  only  another  manifestation 
^  the  love  of  innocence." 

'  Thus  far  M.  Chesneau — and  I  venture  only  to  take  up 
le  admirable  passage  at  a  question  I  did  not  translate: 
Ira-t-on  au  dela,  fera-t-on  mieux  encore  ? " — and  to  answer 
•yfuUy,  Yes,  if  you  choose ;  you,  the  British  public,  to  en- 
)urage  the  artist  in  doing  the  best  she  can  for  you.  She 
ill,  if  you  will  receive  it  when  she  does. 

115.  I  have  brought  with  me  to-day  in  the  first  place 
ime  examples  of  her  pencil  sketches  in  primary  design, 
hese  in  general  the  public  cannot  see,  and  these,  as  is 
ways  the  case  with  the  finest  imaginative  work,  contain 
le  best  essence  of  it, — qualities  never  afterwards  to  be 
icovered,  and  expressed  with  the  best  of  all  sensitive 
istruments,  the  pencil  point.^ 

You  have  here,  for  consummate  example,  a  dance  of 
dries  under  a  mushroom,  which  she  did  under  challenge 
)  show  me  what  fairies  were  like.    "They  11  be  very  like 

^  [Compare  what  Ruskin  says  of  Turner's  practice  with  the  pencil  point: 
ol.  XIII.  p.  245.] 


344 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


children,"  she  said;  I  answered  that  I  didnt  mind,  andi 
should  like  to  see  them,  all  the  same; — so  here  they  are, 
with  a  dance,  also  of  two  girlies,  outside  of  a  mushroom  i 
and  I  don't  know  whether  the  elfins  or  girls  are  fairyJ 
footedest:  and  one  or  two  more  subjects,  which  you  may 
find  out ;  ^ — but,  in  all,  you  will  see  that  the  line  is  in- 
effably tender  and  delicate,  and  can't  in  the  least  be  repre- 
sented by  the  lines  of  a  woodcut.  But  I  have  long  since 
shown  you  the  power  of  line  engraving  as  it  was  first  used 
in  Florence ;  ^  and  if  you  choose,  you  may  far  recover  the^ 
declining  energies  of  line  engraving  in  England,  by  en-j 
couraging  its  use  in  the  multiplication,  whether  of  these,: 
or  of  Turner  outlines,  or  of  old  Florentine  silver  point 
outlines,  no  otherwise  to  be  possessed  by  you.  I  have  given 
you  one  example  of  what  is  possible  in  Mr.  RofFe's  engrav-' 
ing  of  Ida;^  and,  if  all  goes  well,  before  the  autumn  fairy 
rings  are  traced,  you  shall  see  some  fairy  Idas  caught  flying.* 

116.  So  far  of  pure  outline.  Next,  for  the  enrichment 
of  it  by  colour.  Monsieur  Chesneau  doubts  if  the  charm  of 
Miss  Greenaway's  work  can  be  carried  farther.  I  answer,! 
with  security, — yes,  very  much  farther,  and  that  in  two 
directions :  first,  in  her  own  method  of  design ;  and  secondly, 
the  manner  of  its  representation  in  printing.  1 

First,  her  own  design  has  been  greatly  restricted  by  being 
too  ornamental,  or,  in  your  modern  phrase,  decorative; — con- 
tracted into  any  corner  of  a  Christmas  card,  or  stretched 
like  an  elastic  band  round  the  edges  of  an  almanack.  Now, 
her  art  is  much  too  good  to  be  used  merely  for  illumina-J 
tion;  it  is  essentially  and  perfectly  that  of  true  colour- 
picture,  and  that  the  most  naive  and  delightful  manner  of 
picture,  because,  on  the  simplest  terms,  it  comes  nearest 

^  [The  drawings  here  referred  to  were  not  left  at  Oxford.  At  p.  218  of  Kate^ 
Greenaway,  by  M.  H.  Spielmann  and  G.  S.  Layard,  will  be  found  a  reproduction 
of  a  Fairies'  Dance  (though  not  the  one  here  mentioned).] 

2  [In  the  lectures  of  1872,  entitled  Ariadne  Florentina,  Vol.  XXII.] 

3  [See  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  3  (Plate  I.)  ;  already  referred  to  above,  p.  283.] 

*  [Ruskin  gave  ejigravings  from  Miss  Kate  Greenaway's  drawings  in  Letters 
91-96  of  Fors  Clavigera;  others,  which  he  had  prepared,  are  collected  on  Plate 
XXXIX.  here.] 


XXXIX 


I 

I 
I 

I 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


345 


ality.  No  end  of  mischief  has  been  done  to  modern  art 
f  the  habit  of  running  semi-pictorial  illustration  round  the 
largins  of  ornamental  volumes,  and  Miss  Greenaway  has 
sen  wasting  her  strength  too  sorrowfully  in  making  the 
iges  of  her  little  birthday  books,  and  the  like,  glitter  with 
iregarded  gold,  whereas  her  power  should  be  concentrated 
the  direct  illustration  of  connected  story,  and  her  pictures 
lould  be  made  complete  on  the  page,  and  far  more  realistic 
lan  decorative.  There  is  no  charm  so  enduring  as  that 
i  the  real  representation  of  any  given  scene ;  her  present 
esigns  are  like  living  flowers  flattened  to  go  into  an  her- 
arium,  and  sometimes  too  pretty  to  be  believed.  We  must 
)k  her  for  more  descriptive  reality,^  for  more  convincing 
mplicity,  and  we  must  get  her  to  organize  a  school  of 
)lourists  by  hand,  who  can  absolutely  facsimile  her  own 
rst  drawing. 

117.  This  is  the  second  matter  on  which  I  have  to 
isist.  I  bring  with  me  to-day  twelve  of  her  original  draw- 
igs,  and  have  mounted  beside  them,  good  impressions  of 
he  published  prints. 

I  may  heartily  congratulate  both  the  publishers  and  pos- 
pssors  of  the  book  on  the  excellence  of  these ;  yet  if  you 
jxamine  them  closely,  you  will  find  that  the  colour  blocks 
f  the  print  sometimes  slip  a  little  aside,  so  as  to  lose  the 
recision  of  the  drawing  in  important  places ;  ^  and  in  many 
ther  respects  better  can  be  done,  in  at  least  a  certain 
umber  of  chosen  copies.  I  must  not,  however,  detain  you 
3-day  by  entering  into  particulars  in  this  matter.    I  am 

1  [This  was  a  request  which  Ruskin  was  constantly  pressing  upon  Kate  Green- 
ivay :  see  his  letters  to  her  in  a  later  volume  of  this  edition,  and  compare 
ol.  XXX.  p.  239.] 

^  [To  like  effect,  M.  Chesneau  said,  in  a  note  appended  to  the  English  transla- 
on  of  his  hook  (p.  836):  "The  author  has  since  seen  at  the  Ruskin  school  at 
>xford  a  whole  set  of  original  designs  from  the  pencil  of  this  charming  artist,  and 
as  had  an  opportunity  of  comparing  them  with  the  engravings  in  colour  which 
ave  been  made  from  them.  He  can  only  say  now  that  the  reproductions  resemble 
tie  originals  as  the  light  of  the  moon  does  the  sunlight ;  they  are  a  pale  reflection." 
m  account  of  the  methods  employed  by  the  late  Mr.  Edmund  Evans  in  producing 
is  coloured  prints  from  Kate  Greenaway's  designs  will  be  found  at  pp.  64-65  of 
lessrs.  Spielmann  and  Layard's  book.] 


346  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


content  to  ask  your  sympathy  in  the  endeavour,  if  I  ca 
prevail  on  the  artist  to  undertake  it. 

Only  with  respect  to  this  and  every  other  question  c 
method  in  engraving,  observe  farther  that  all  the  drawing 
I  bring  you  to-day  agree  in  one  thing, — minuteness  an' 
delicacy  of  touch  carried  to  its  utmost  limit,  visible  in  it 
perfectness  to  the  eyes  of  youth,  but  neither  executed  will 
a  magnifying  glass,  nor,  except  to  aged  eyes,  needing  oik 
Even  I,  at  sixty-four,  can  see  the  essential  qualities  of  th 
work  without  spectacles ;  though  only  the  youngest  of  m  i 
friends  here  can  see,  for  instance,  Kate's  fairy  dance,  perl 
fectly,  but  they  can,  with  their  own  bright  eyes. 

118.  And  now  please  note  this,  for  an  entirely  genert 
law,  again  and  again  reiterated  by  me  for  many  a  year 
All  great  art  is  delicate,  and  fine  to  the  uttermost.  Whei 
ever  there  is  blotting,  or  daubing,  or  dashing,  there  i 
weakness,  at  least ;  probably,  affectation  ;  certainly,  bluntnes 
of  feeling.  But,  all  delicacy  which  is  rightly  pleasing  t" 
the  human  mind  is  addressed  to  the  unaided  human  sigh 
not  to  microscopic  help  or  mediation.^ 

And  now  generalize  that  law  farther.  As  all  nobl 
sight  is  with  the  eyes  that  God  has  given  you,  so  all  nobl 
motion  is  with  the  limbs  God  has  balanced  for  you,  an( 
all  noble  strength  with  the  arms  He  has  knit.  Thougl 
you  should  put  electric  coils  into  your  high  heels,  an( 
make  spring-heeled  Jacks  and  Gills  of  yourselves,  you  wil 
never  dance,  so,  as  you  could  barefoot.  Though  you  coul( 
have  machines  that  would  swing  a  ship  of  war  into  thi 
sea,  and  drive  a  railway  train  through  a  rock,  all  divin< 
strength  is  still  the  strength  of  Herakles,  a  man's  wrestle| 
and  a  man's  blow. 

119.  There  are  two  other  points  I  must  try  to  enforce 
in  closing,  very  clearly.  Landscape,"  says  M.  Chesneau 
"  takes  great  part  in  these  lovely  designs."    He  does  noi 

^  [See,  for  instance,  Modern  Painters,  vol.  iii.  (Vol.  V.  p.  63),  and  Elements  q 
Drawing,  Preface,  §  7  (Vol.  XV.  p.  12).] 

2  [Compare  Vol.  XV.  p.  405;  Vol.  XXV.  p.  469;  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  114;  am 
Prceteritaf  ii.  §  200.] 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


847 


ay  of  what  kind;  may  I  ask  you  to  look,  for  yourselves, 
nd  think  ? 

^  I    There  are  no  railroads  in  it,  to  carry  the  children  away 
'  vith,  are  there?  no  tunnel  or  pit  mouths  to  swallow  them 
ip,  no  league-long   viaducts— no   blinkered  iron  bridges  ? 
There  are  only  winding  brooks,  wooden  foot-bridges,  and 
frassy  hills  without  any  holes  cut  into  them ! 

Again — there  are  no  parks,  no  gentlemen's  seats  with 
'  :]Lttached  stables  and  offices  ! — no  rows  of  model  lodging 
'  lOUses !  no  charitable  institutions !  I  It  seems  as  if  none 
)f  these  things  which  the  English  mind  now  rages  after, 
lossess  any  attraction  whatever  for  this  unimpressionable 
)erson.  She  is  a  graceful  Gallio — Gallia  gratia  plena, — and 
^ares  for  none  of  those  things/ 

And  more  wonderful  still, — there  are  no  gasworks  !  no 
vaterworks,  no  mowing  machines,  no  sewing  machines,  no 
elegraph  poles,  no  vestige,  in  fact,  of  science,  civilization, 
1  economical  arrangements,  or  commercial  enterprise  ! ! ! 
'  120.  Would  you  wish  me,  with  professorial  authority, 
,0  advise  her  that  her  conceptions  belong  to  the  dark  ages, 
iind  must  be  reared  on  a  new  foundation?  Or  is  it,  on 
:he  other  hand,  recommendably  conceivable  by  you,  that 
Derhaps  the  world  we  truly  live  in  may  not  be  quite  so 
jhangeable  as  you  have  thought  it ; — that  all  the  gold  and 
lilver  you  can  dig  out  of  the  earth  are  not  worth  the 
dngcups  and  the  daisies  she  gave  you  of  her  grace;  and 
that  all  the  fury,  and  the  flutter,  and  the  wonder,  and  the 
wistfulness,  of  your  lives,  will  never  discover  for  you  any 
other  than  the  ancient  blessing:  "He  maketh  me  to  lie 
down  in  green  pastures.  He  leadeth  me  beside  the  still 
waters,  He  restoreth  my  soul"?^ 

121.  Yet  one  word  more.  Observe  that  what  this  un- 
impressionable person  does  draw,  she  draws  as  like  it  as 
she  can.  It  is  true  that  the  combination  or  composition 
of  things  is  not  what  you  can  see  every  day.    You  can't 

1  [See  Acts  xviii.  17.] 
^  [Psalms  xxiii.  2.] 


348 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


every  day,  for  instance,  see  a  baby  thrown  into  a  basket 
of  roses ;  but  when  she  has  once  pleasantly  invented  that 
arrangement  for  you,  baby  is  as  like  baby,  and  rose  as  like 
rose,  as  she  can  possibly  draw  them.  And  the  beauty  oj 
them  is  in  being  like.  They  are  blissful,  just  in  the  degree 
that  they  are  natural ;  and  the  fairy  land  she  creates  for 
you  is  not  beyond  the  sky  nor  beneath  the  sea,  but  nigh 
you,  even  at  your  doors.^  She  does  but  show  you  how  to^ 
see  it,  and  how  to  cherish. 

Long  since  I  told  you  this  great  law  of  noble  imagi- 
nation. It  does  not  create,  it  does  not  even  adorn,  it  does 
but  reveal,  the  treasures  to  be  possessed  by  the  spirit.  I 
told  you  this^  of  the  work  of  the  great  painter  whom, 
in  that  day,  every  one  accused  of  representing  only  the 
fantastic  and  the  impossible.  I  said  forty  years  ago,  and 
say  at  this  instant,  more  solemnly,  All  his  magic  is  in' 
his  truth. 

122.  I  show  you,  to-day,  a  beautiful  copy  made  for 
me  by  Mr.  Macdonald,  of  the  drawing  which,  of  all  the 
Turners  I  gave  you,  I  miss  the  most.^  I  never  thought  it 
could  have  been  copied  at  all,  and  have  received  from  Mr.j 
Macdonald,  in  this  lovely  rendering  of  it,  as  much  a  lesson 
as  a  consolation.  For  my  purpose  to-day  it  is  just  as  good 
as  if  I  had  brought  the  drawing  itself. 

It  is  one  of  the  Loire  series,  which  the  engravers  could 
not  attempt,  because  it  was  too  lovely;  or  would  not^ 
attempt,  because  there  was,  to  their  notion,  nothing  in  it. 
It  is  only  a  coteau,  scarce  a  hundred  feet  above  the  river, 
nothing  like  so  high  as  the  Thames  banks  between  here 
and  Reading,  only  a  coteau,  and  a  recess  of  calm  water, 
and  a  breath  of  mist,  and  a  ray  of  sunset.  The  simplest 
things,  the  frequentest,  the  dearest;  things  that  you  may 
see  any  summer  evemng  by  a  thousand  thousand  streams 

1  [Mark  xiii.  29.] 

2  [Here  the  you "  means  Ruskin's  readers  generally,  and  the  reference  is  to 
Modern  Painters,  Preface  to  the  Second  Edition,  §  46  (Vol.  III.  p.  51).] 

2  [Standard  Series  No.  3  (Vol.  XXI.  p.  12).  Mr.  Macdonald's  copy  was  placed 
by  Ruskin  at  Felstead  House  (Training  School),  Oxford.] 


/ 


IV.  FAIRY  LAND 


849 


tnong  the  low  hills  of  old  familiar  lands.  Love  them, 
ad  see  them  rightly, — Andes  and  Caucasus,  Amazon  and 
fidus,  can  give  you  no  more. 

123.  The  danger  imminent  on  you  is  the  destruction 
f  what  you  have,  I  walked  yesterday  afternoon  round 
t.  John's  gardens,  and  found  them,  as  they  always  are 
I  spring  time,  almost  an  ideal  of  earthly  Paradise, — the 
t.  John's  students  also  disporting  themselves  therein  in 
ames  preparatory  to  the  advent  of  the  true  fairies  of 
ommemoration.  But,  the  afternoon  before,  I  had  walked 
own  St.  John's  Road,  and,  on  emerging  therefrom  to 
ross  the  railway,  found  on  my  left  hand  a  piece  of  waste 
round,  extremely  characteristic  of  that  with  which  we  now 
ways  adorn  the  suburbs  of  our  cities,  and  of  which  it 
m  only  be  said  that  no  demons  could  contrive,  under  the 
irth,  a  more  uncomfortable  and  abominable  place  of  misery 
)Y  the  condemned  souls  of  dirty  people,  than  Oxford  thus 
[lows  the  western  light  to  shine  upon — "nel  aer  dolce, 
be  dal  sol  s'allegra."^  For  many  a  year  I  have  now  been 
Jling  you,^  and  in  the  final  words  of  this  first  course  of 
matures  in  which  I  have  been  permitted  again  to  resume 
ork  among  you,  let  me  tell  you  yet  once  more,  and  if 
ossible,  more  vehemently,  that  neither  sound  art,  policy, 
or  religion,  can  exist  in  England,  until,  neglecting,  if  it 
lUst  be,  your  own  pleasure  gardens  and  pleasure  chambers, 
ou  resolve  that  the  streets  which  are  the  habitation  of  the 
cor,  and  the  fields  which  are  the  playgrounds  of  their 
hildren,  shall  be  again  restored  to  the  rule  of  the  spirits, 
fhosoever  they  are  in  earth,  and  heaven,  that  ordain,  and 
iward,  with  constant  and  conscious  felicity,  all  that  is 
ecent  and  orderly,  beautiful  and  pure. 

^  [Inferno,  vii.  122  :  quoted  also  in  Vol.  V.  p.  311,  and  Vol.  X.  p.  381.] 
'  [Compare  Lectures  on  Art,  §  116  (Vol.  XX.  p.  107).] 


LECTURE  V 
THE  FIRESIDE 
JOHN  LEECH  AND  JOHN  TENNIEL 

{Delivered  1th  and  10th  November  1883)  | 

124.  The  outlines  of  the  schools  of  our  National  Art  which 
I  attempted  in  the  four  lectures  given  last  spring,  had  led 
us  to  the  point  where  the,  to  us  chiefly  important,  and,  it 
may  perhaps  be  said,  temporarily,  all  important  questions 
respecting  the  uses  of  art  in  popular  education,  were  intro- 
duced to  us  by  the  beautiful  drawings  of  Miss  Alexander 
and  Miss  Greenaway.  But  these  drawings,  in  their  digni- 
fied and  delicate,  often  reserved,  and  sometimes  severe 
characters,  address  themselves  to  a  circle,  which  however 
large, — or  even  (I  say  it  with  thankfulness)  practically 
infinite,  yet  consists  exclusively  of  persons  of  already  culti- 
vated sensibilities,  and  more  or  less  gentle  and  serious 
temper.  The  interests  of  general  education  compel  our 
reference  to  a  class  entirely  beneath  these,  or  at  least  dis- 
tinct from  them ;  and  our  consideration  of  art-methods  to 
which  the  conditions  of  cheapness,  and  rapidity  of  multipli- 
cation, are  absolutely  essential. 

125.  I  have  stated,  and  it  is  one  of  the  paradoxes  of 
my  political  economy  which  you  will  find  on  examination 
to  be  the  expression  of  a  final  truth,  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  just  or  real  cheapness,  but  that  all  things  have 
their  necessary  price :  ^  and  that  you  can  no  more  obtain 
them  for  less  than  that  price,  than  you  can  alter  the  course 
of  the  earth.  When  you  obtain  anything  yourself  for  half- 
price,  somebody  else  must  always  have  paid  the  other  half.| 

1  [See,  for  instance,  Munera  PulveHs,  §  62  n.  (Vol.  XVII.  p.  185).] 

350 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


351 


ut,  in  the  sense  either  of  having  cost  less  labour,  or  of 
eing  the  productions  of  less  rare  genius,  there  are,  of 
mrse,  some  kinds  of  art  more  generally  attainable  than 
:hers;  and,  of  these,  the  kinds  which  depend  on  the  use 
?  the  simplest  means  are  also  those  which  are  calculated 
)  have  most  influence  over  the  simplest  minds.  The  dis- 
plined  qualities  of  line-engraving  will  scarcely  be  relished, 
id  often  must  even  pass  unperceived,  by  an  uneducated 
^  careless  observer;  but  the  attention  of  a  child  may  be 
^cited,  and  the  apathy  of  a  clown  overcome,  by  the  blunt 
nes  of  a  vigorous  woodcut. 

i  126.  To  my  own  mind,  there  is  no  more  beautiful  proof 
•  benevolent  design  in  the  creation  of  the  earth,  than  the 
^act  adaptation  of  its  materials  to  the  art-power  of  man.^ 
he  plasticity  and  constancy  under  fire  of  clay ;  the  ductility 
id  fusibility  of  gold  and  iron;  the  consistent  softness  of 
larble;  and  the  fibrous  toughness  of  wood,  are  in  each 
laterial  carried  to  the  exact  degree  which  renders  them 
rovocative  of  skill  by  their  resistance,  and  full  of  reward 
)r  it  by  their  compliance ;  so  that  the  delight  with  which, 
'ter  sufldciently  intimate  study  of  the  methods  of  manual 
ork,  the  student  ought  to  regard  the  excellence  of  a 
lasterpiece,  is  never  merely  the  admiration  of  difficulties 
/ercome,  but  the  sympathy,  in  a  certain  sense,  both  with 
le  enjoyment  of  the  workman  in  managing  a  substance  so 
liable  to  his  will,  and  with  the  worthiness,  fitness,  and 
bedience  of  the  material  itself,  which  at  once  invites  his 
uthority,  and  rewards  his  concessions. 

127.  But  of  all  the  various  instruments  of  his  life  and 
enius,  none  are  so  manifold  in  their  service  to  him  as 
lat  which  the  forest  leaves  gather  every  summer  out  of 
le  air  he  breathes.  Think  of  the  use  of  it  in  house  and 
irniture  alone.  I  have  lived  in  marble  palaces,  and  under 
-escoed  loggie,  but  have  never  been  so  comfortable  in 
ither  as  in  the  clean  room  of  an  old  Swiss  inn,  whose 

^  [On  this  subject,  see  Vol.  VI.  p.  143,  and  the  other  passages  there  noted 
specially  Vol.  XII.  p.  200).] 


352  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


walls  and  floor  were  of  plain  deal.  You  will  find  also,  i 
the  long  run,  that  none  of  your  modern  eesthetic  upholster 
can  match,  for  comfort,  good  old  English  oak  wainscot 
and  that  the  crystalline  magnificence  of  the  marbles  c 
Genoa  and  the  macigno  of  Florence  can  give  no  morj 
pleasure  to  daily  life  than  the  carved  brackets  and  trefoile 
gables  which  once  shaded  the  busy  and  merry  streets,  an. 
lifted  the  chiming  carillons  above  them,  in  Kent  ani 
Picardy. 

128.  As  a  material  of  sculpture,  wood  has  hitherto  bee] 
employed  chiefly  by  the  less  cultivated  races  of  Europel 
and  we  cannot  know  what  Orcagna  would  have  made  o 
his  shrine,  or  Ghiberti  of  his  gates,  if  they  had  worked  ii 
olive  wood  instead  of  marble  and  bronze.  But  even  a 
matters  now  stand,  the  carving  of  the  pinnacled  stalls  ii 
our  northern  cathedrals,  and  that  of  the  foliage  on  th( 
horizontal  beams  of  domestic  architecture,  gave  rise  to  i 
school  of  ornament  of  which  the  proudest  edifices  of  th(| 
sixteenth  century  are  only  the  translation  into  stone ;  amj 
to  which  our  somewhat  dull  respect  for  the  zigzags  and 
dog-teeth  of  a  sterner  time  has  made  us  alike  neglectful 
and  unjust.'"'  j 

129.  But  it  is  above  all  as  a  medium  of  engraving  thai 
the  easy  submission  of  wood  to  the  edge  of  the  chisel, — j 
will  use  this  plain  word,  if  you  please,  instead  of  burin,— 
and  the  tough  durability  of  its  grain,  have  made  it  s( 
widely  serviceable  to  us  for  popular  pleasure  in  art;  bui 
mischievous  also,  in  the  degree  in  which  it  encourages  th^ 
cheapest  and  vilest  modes  of  design.  The  coarsest  scraw 
with  a  blunt  pen  can  be  reproduced  on  a  wood-block  wit! 
perfect  ease  by  the  clumsiest  engraver;  and  there  are  tern 
of  thousands  of  vulgar  artists  who  can  scrawl  with  a  bluni 
pen,  and  with  no  trouble  to  themselves,  something  thai 
will  amuse,  as  I  said,  a  child  or  a  clown.  But  there  ii 
not  one  artist  in  ten  thousand  who  can  draw  even  simple 

*  Compare  Bible  of  Amiens^  ch.  iv.  §  10,  '^aisles  of  aspen,  orchards  ot 
apple,  clusters  of  vine"  [above,  p.  131]. 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


353 


.)jects  rightly  with  a  perfectly  pure  line;  when  such  a  line 
drawn,  only  an  extremely  skilful  engraver  can  reproduce 
on  wood;  when  reproduced,  it  is  liable  to  be  broken  at 
e  second  or  third  printing;  and  supposing  it  permanent, 

;)t  one  spectator  in  ten  thousand  would  care  for  it. 

130.  There  is,  however,  another  temptation,  constant  in 
1  e  practice  of  woodcutting,  which  has  been  peculiarly  harm- 
]1  to  us  in  the  present  day.  The  action  of  the  chisel  on 
ood,  as  you  doubtless  are  aware,  is  to  produce  a  white 
luch  on  a  black  ground;  and  if  a  few  white  touches  can 
15  so  distributed  as  to  produce  any  kind  of  effect,  all  the 
lack  ground  becomes  part  of  the  imagined  picture,  with 
]  t  trouble  whatever  to  the  workman :  so  that  you  buy  in 
;»ur  cheap  magazine  a  picture, — say  four  inches  square,  or 
Kteen  square  inches  of  surface,^ — in  the  whole  of  which 
lere  may  only  be  half  an  inch  of  work.  Whereas,  in 
lie  engraving,  every  atom  of  the  shade  has  to  be  worked 
jr,  and  that  with  extreme  care,  evenness  and  dexterity  of 
I  nd;  while  even  in  etching,  though  a  great  quantity  of 
ie  shade  is  mere  burr  and  scrabble  and  blotch,  a  certain 
(lantity  of  real  care  and  skill  must  be  spent  in  covering 
1e  surface  at  first.  Whereas  the  common  woodcut  requires 
larcely  more  trouble  than  a  schoolboy  takes  with  a  scrawl 
(  .  his  slate,  and  you  might  order  such  pictures  by  the  cart- 
lid  from  Coniston  quarries,  with  only  a  clever  urchin  or 
1^0  to  put  the  chalk  on. 

131.  But  the  mischief  of  the  woodcut,  considered  simply 
1  a  means  in  the  publisher's  hands  of  imposing  cheap  work 
(I  the  purchaser,  is  trebled  by  its  morbid  power  of  ex- 
jessing  ideas  of  ugliness  or  terror.  While  no  entirely 
l;autiful  thing  can  be  represented  in  a  woodcut,  every  form 
<  vulgarity  or  unpleasantness  can  be  given  to  the  life; 
ad  the  result  is,  that,  especially  in  our  popular  scientific 
l>oks,  the  mere  effort  to  be  amusing  and  attractive  leads 
1  the  publication  of  every  species  of  the  abominable.^  No 


1  [Compare  Aratra  Pentelici,  §  101  n.  (Vol.  XX.  p.  267).] 
XXXIII.  z 


354 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


microscope  can  teach  the  beauty  of  a  statue,  nor  can  an 
woodcut  represent  that  of  a  nobly  bred  human  form ;  bu 
only  last  term  we  saw  the  whole  Ashmolean  Society  ^  hel 
in  a  trance  of  rapture  by  the  inexplicable  decoration  c 
the  posteriors  of  a  flea ;  and  I  have  framed  for  you  here 
around  a  page  of  the  scientific  journal  which  styles  itsel 
Knowledge,  a  collection  of  woodcuts  out   of  a  scientifi 
survey  of  South  America,^  presenting  collectively  to  you,  iij 
designs  ignorantly  drawn  and  vilely  engraved,  yet  with  thi 
peculiar  advantage  belonging  to  the  cheap  woodcut,  what! 
ever,  through  that  fourth  part  of  the  round  world,  frorij 
Mexico  to  Patagonia,   can   be   found   of  savage,  sordid 
vicious,  or  ridiculous  in  humanity,  without  so  much  as  on 
exceptional  indication  of  a  graceful  form,  a  true  instinci 
or  a  cultivable  capacity.  I 

132.  The  second  frame  is  of  French  scientific  art,  anc 
still  more  curiously  horrible.  I  have  cut  these  examples 
not  by  any  means  the  ugliest,  out  of  Les  Pourquoi  di\ 
Mademoiselle  Suzanne,^  a  book  in  which  it  is  proposed  t(! 
instruct  a  young  lady  of  eleven  or  twelve  years  old,  amus 
ingly,  in  the  elements  of  science. 

In  the  course  of  the  lively  initiation,  the  young  ladj 
has  the  advantage  of  seeing  a  garde  chavipetre  struck  deac 
by  lightning;  she  is  par  parenthese  entertained  with  th( 
history  and  picture  of  the  suicide  of  the  cook  Vatel;  some 
body's  heart,  liver,  and  forearm  are  dissected  for  her;  al 
the  phenomena  of  nightmare  are  described  and  pourtrayed 
and  whatever  spectres  of  monstrosity  can  be  conjured  int( 
the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the  sky,  the  sea,  the  railway 

^  [The  Ashmolean  Natural  History  Society  of  Oxfordshire.] 
^  [The  examples  described  in  §  131  are  in  the  Ruskin  Drawing  School  a 
Oxford,  Reference  Series  No.  164  (Vol.  XXI.  p.  42).  The  frame  of  "French  cuts' 
{§  132)  is  no  longer  in  the  school.  "1  shall  place  them/'  said  Ruskin  in  the  lectur 
as  delivered,  '*^next  to  some  scientific  studies  by  Tintoret,  in  which  you  can  sc 
all  that  is  graceful  in  form,  true  in  instinct,  and  cultivated  in  capacity"  {Pall  Mai 
Gazette,  November  8).] 

^  [By  E.  Desbeaux,  with  preface  bv  Xavier  Marmier  of  the  Academie  Fran9aise 
Paris,  1881.  For  Ruskin's  references' here,  see  pp.  242;  34,  35;  69,  70,  72;  213 
and  {e.g.)  93,  112,  179.] 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


355 


id  the  telegraph,  are  collected  into  black  company  by  the 
leap  engraver.  Black  company  is  a  mild  word:  you  will 
id  the  right  phrase  now  instinctively  adopted  by  the  very 
arsons  who  are  most  charmed  by  these  new  modes  of 
nsation.  In  the  Century  magazine  for  this  month,  the 
viewer  of  some  American  landscape  of  this  class  tells  us 
lat  Mr.  — — ,  whoever  he  is,  by  a  series  of  bands  of  black 
id  red  paint,  has  succeeded  in  entirely  reproducing  the 
Demoniac''  beauty  of  the  sunset/ 

133.  I  have  framed  these  French  cuts,  however,  chiefly 
»r  purposes  of  illustration  in  my  last  lecture  of  this  year, 
r  they  show  you  in  perfect  abstract  all  the  wrong, — 
rong  unquestionably,  whether  you  call  it  Demoniac,  Dia- 
)lic,  or  JUsthetic, — against  which  my  entire  teaching,  from 
s  first  syllable  to  this  day,  has  been  straight  antagonist, 
f  this,  as  I  have  said,  in  my  terminal  address :  ^  the  first 
ame  is  for  to-day  enough  representation  of  ordinary  Eng- 
:h  cheap-trade  woodcutting  in  its  necessary  limitation  to 
Tly  subject,  and  its  disrespect  for  the  very  quality  of  the 
aterial  on  which  its  value  depends,  elasticity.  There  is 
is  great  difference  between  the  respect  for  his  material 
oper  to  a  workman  in  metal  or  marble,  and  to  one 
orking  in  clay  or  wood,  that  the  former  has  to  ex- 
bit  the  actual  beauty  of  the  substance  itself,  but  the 
tter  only  its  special  capacity  of  answering  his  purpose.  A 
ulptor  in  marble  is  required  to  show  the  beauty  of  marble 
urface,  a  sculptor  in  gold  its  various  lustre,  a  worker  in 
on  its  ductile  strength.  But  the  woodcutter  has  not  to 
chibit  his  block,  nor  the  engraver  his  copperplate.  They 
ive  only  to  use  the  relative  softness  and  rigidity  of  those 
ibstances  to  receive  and  multiply  the  lines  drawn  by  the 
iman  hand;  and  it  is  not  the  least  an  admirable  quahty 

wood  that  it  is  capable  of  printing  a  large  blot;  but 
1  entirely  admirable  one  that  by  its  tough  elasticity  it 

1  [See  vol.  27,  p.  15,  in  an  article  by  M.  G.  Van  Rensselaer  on  "  An  American 
tist  in  England"  (Mr.  Winslow  Homer).] 

2  [See  below,  §  184  (p.  888).] 


356 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


can  preserve  through  any  number  of  impressions  the  di 
tinctness  of  a  well-cut  line. 

134.  Not  admirable,  I  say,  to  print  a  blot;  but  to  prir; 
a  pure  line  unbroken,  and  an  intentionally  widened  spac 
or  spot  of  darkness,  of  the  exact  shape  wanted.    In  m 
former  lectures  on  Wood  Engraving^  I  did  not  enoug' 
explain  this  quite  separate  virtue  of  the  material.  Neitht 
in  pencil  nor  pen  drawing,  neither  in  engraving  nor  etchinf 
can  a  line  be  widened  arbitrarily,  or  a  spot  enlarged  t 
ease.    The  action  of  the  moving  point  is  continuous ;  yo; 
can  increase  or  diminish  the  line's  thickness  gradually,  bt' 
not  by  starts ;  you  must  drive  your  plough-furrow,  or  k 
your  pen  glide,  at  a  fixed  rate  of  motion ;  nor  can  yo 
afterwards  give  more  breadth  to  the  pen  line  without  ovei, 
charging  the  ink,  nor  by  any  labour  of  etching  tool  dij 
out  a  cavity  of  shadow  such  as  the  wood  engraver  leavd 
in  an  instant.  1 

135.  Hence,  the  methods  of  design  which  depend  o' 
irregularly  expressive  shapes  of  black  touch,  belong  to  woo 
exclusively ;  and  the  examples  placed  formerly  in  yo4 
school  from  Bewick's  cuts  of  speckled  plumage,  and  Burgl< 
mair's  heraldry  of  barred  helmets  and  black  eagles,^  wei 
intended  to  direct  your  attention  to  this  especially  inteii 
lectual  manner  of  work,  as  opposed  to  modern  scribblin 
and  hatching.  But  I  have  now  removed  these  old-fashione 
prints,  (placing  them,  however,  in  always  accessible  reserve 
because  I  found  they  possessed  no  attraction  for  inexper] 
enced  students,  and  I  think  it  better  to  explain  the  qualitiel 
of  execution  of  a  similar  kind,  though  otherwise  directec 
which  are  to  be  found  in  the  designs  of  our  living  master: 
— addressed  to  existing  tastes, — and  occupied  with  familia 
scenes. 

136.  Although  I  have  headed  my  lecture  only  with  th 

1  [Ariadne  Fiorentina,  §  81  (Vol.  XXII.  p.  351).]  J 
^  [An  example  of  Bewick,  of  the  kind  referred  to,  is  No.  4  in  No.  188  of  tli 
Educational  Series  (Vol.  XXI.  p.  91).    Examples  of  Burgkmair  are  in  the  Rud 
meutary  Series  (ibid.,  p.  177).    For  other  references  to  Bewick's  plumage,  see  Lai 
of  Feso'le  (Vol.  XV.  p.  410),  and  Cestus  of  Aglaia,  §  110  (Vol.  XIX.  p.  155).] 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


357 


ames  of  Leech  and  Tenniel,  as  being  the  real  founders  of 
^unch,  and  by  far  the  greatest  of  its  illustrators,  both  in 
)rce  of  art  and  range  of  thought,  yet  in  the  precision  of 
le  use  of  his  means,  and  the  subtle  boldness  to  which 
s  has  educated  the  interpreters  of  his  design,  Mr.  Du 
laurier  is  more  exemplary  than  either ;  ^  and  I  have  there- 
•re  had  enlarged  by  photography, — your  thanks  are  due 
)  the  brother  of  Miss  Greenaway  for  the  skill  with  which 
le  proofs  have  been  produced, — for  first  example  of  fine 
oodcutting,  the  heads  of  two  of  Mr.  Du  Maurier's  chief 
3roines,  Mrs.  Ponsonby  de  Tomkyns,  and  Lady  Midas,  in 
le  great  scene  where  Mrs.  Ponsonby  takes  on  herself  the 
Iministration  of  Lady  Midas's  "  at  home."  ^ 

You  see  at  once  how  the  effect  in  both  depends  on  the 
)agulation  and  concretion  of  the  black  touches  into  masses 
|;lieved  only  by  interspersed  sparkling  grains  of  incised 
^ht,  presenting  the  realistic  and  vital  portraiture  of  both 
dies  with  no  more  labour  than  would  occupy  the  draughts- 
lan  but  a  few  minutes,  and  the  engraver  perhaps  an  hour 
^  two.  It  is  true  that  the  features  of  the  elder  of  the 
vo  friends  might  be  supposed  to  yield  themselves  without 
fficulty  to  the  effect  of  the  irregular  and  blunt  lines 
hich  are  employed  to  reproduce  them;  but  it  is  a  matter 
"  no  small  wonderment  to  see  the  delicate  profile  and 
>ftly  rounded  features  of  the  younger  lady  suggested  by 
1  outline  which  must  have  been  drawn  in  the  course  of  a 
w  seconds,  and  by  some  eight  or  ten  firmly  swept  parallel 
^strokes  riglit  across  the  cheek. 

137.  I  must  ask  you  especially  to  note  the  successful 
;sult  of  this  easy  method  of  obtaining  an  even  tint,  be- 
luse  it  is  the  proper,  and  the  inexorably  required,  method 
P  shade  in  classic  wood-engraving.  Recently,  very  remark- 
3le  and  admirable  efforts  have  been  made  by  American 

'  [For  other  references  to  George  Du  Maurier  (1834-1896),  see  Vol.  XV.  p.  374 ; 
A.  XVI.  p.  297  ;  Vol.  XXII.  p.  468 ;  Vol.  XXV.  p.  128  (where  particular  drawings 
e  mentioned  as  typical)  ;  and  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  439.] 

^  ["Mistress  and  Pupil/'  in  Punch,  July  7,  1883;  reprinted  in  vol.  ii.  p.  107, 

Society  Pictures  drawn  by  George  Du  Maurier,  1891.] 


358  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


artists  to  represent  flesh  tints  with  fine  textures  of  crossec 
white  fines  and  spots.    But  all  such  attempts  are  futile;  i 
is  an  optical  law  that  transparency  in  shadows  can  only  b( 
obtained  by  dark  lines  with  white  spaces,  not  white  line;! 
with  dark  spaces.    For  what  we  feel  to  be  transparency  ir 
any  colour  or  any  atmosphere,  consists  in  the  penetratior 
of  darkness  by  a  more  distant  light,  not  in  the  subduind 
of  light  by  a  more  distant  darkness.    A  snowstorm  seer 
white  on  a  dark  sky  gives  us  no  idea  of  transparency,  but 
rain  between  us  and  a  rainbow  does ;  and  so  throughout  al 
the  expedients  of  chiaroscuro  drawing  and  painting,  trans 
parent  effects  are  produced  by  laying  dark  over  light,  anc 
opaque  by  laying  light  over  dark.    It  would  be  tedious  ii 
a  lecture  to  press  these  technical  principles  farther ;  it  if 
enough  that  I  should  state  the  general  law,  and  its  practica 
consequence,  that  no  wood  engraver  need  attempt  to  copji 
Correggio  or  Guido ;  his  business  is  not  with  complexions 
but  with  characters ;  and  his  fame  is  to  rest,  not  on  tht^ 
perfection  of  his  work,  but  on  its  propriety.  i 

138.  I  must  in  the  next  place  ask  you  to  look  at  th( 
aphorisms  given  as  an  art  catechism  in  the  second  chaptei 
of  the  Laws  of  Fcsole}  One  of  the  principal  of  these  give 
the  student,  as  a  test  by  which  to  recognize  good  colour 
that  all  the  white  in  the  picture  is  precious,  and  all  the  blacU 
co7ispicuous ;  not  by  the  quantity  of  it,  but  the  impassable 
difference  between  it  and  all  the  coloured  spaces. 

The  rule  is  just  as  true  for  woodcutting.  In  fine 
examples  of  it,  the  black  is  left  for  local  colour  only — foij 
dark  dresses,  or  dark  patterns  on  light  ones,  dark  hair,  oi 
dark  eyes ;  it  is  never  left  for  general  gloom,  out  of  whicK 
the  figures  emerge  like  spectres.  • 

139.  When,  however,  a  number  of  Mr.  Du  Maurier's 
compositions  are  seen  together,  and  compared  with  the 
natural  simplicity  and  aerial  space  of  Leech's,  they  will 
be  felt  to   depend  on  this  principle  too  absolutely  and: 

^  [Vol.  XV.  pp.  359-864.  The  particular  aphorism  here  cited,  however,  is  given! 
not  in  the  Laws  of  Fesole,  but  in  the  Elements  of  Drawing,  ^  176  (Vol.  XV.  p.  164). 
Compare  Lectures  on  Landscape^  §  73  (Vol.  XXII.  p.  55).] 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


359 


adisguisedly ;  so  that  the  quarterings  of  black  and  white  in 
lem  sometimes  look  more  like  a  chess  board  than  a  picture, 
ut  in  minor  and  careful  passages,  his  method  is  wholly 
cemplary,  and  in  the  next  example  I  enlarge  for  you, — 
iderman  Sir  Robert  admiring  the  portraits  of  the  Duchess 
id  the  Colonel,^ — he  has  not  only  shown  you  every  prin- 
ple  of  woodcutting,  but  abstracted  for  you  also  the  laws 
f  beauty,  whose  definite  and  every  year  more  emphatic 
>sertion  in  the  pages  of  Punch  is  the  ruling  charm  and 
lost  legitimate  pride  of  the  im.mortal  periodical.  Day 
y  day  the  search  for  grotesque,  ludicrous,  or  loathsome 
ibject  which  degraded  the  caricatures  in  its  original,  the 
liarivari,  and  renders  the  dismally  comic  journals  of  Italy 
le  mere  plagues  and  cancers  of  the  State,  became,  in  our 
Inglish  satirists,  an  earnest  comparison  of  the  things  which 
'^ere  graceful  and  honourable,  with  those  which  were  grace- 
3ss  and  dishonest,  in  modern  life.  Gradually  the  kind 
nd  vivid  genius  of  John  Leech,  capable  in  its  bright- 
ess  of  finding  pretty  jest  in  everything,  but  capable  in 
:s  tenderness  also  of  rejoicing  in  the  beauty  of  every- 
hing,  softened  and  illumined  with  its  loving  wit  the  entire 
cope  of  English  social  scene ;  the  graver  power  of  Tenniel 
Tought  a  steady  tone  and  law  of  morality  into  the  licence 
f  political  contention ;  and  finally  the  acute,  highly  trained, 
nd  accurately  physiologic  observation  of  Du  Maurier  traced 
or  us,  to  its  true  origin  in  vice  or  virtue,  every  order  of 
xpression  in  the  mixed  circle  of  metropolitan  rank  and 
wealth :  and  has  done  so  with  a  closeness  of  delineation 
he  like  of  which  has  not  been  seen  since  Holbein,  and 
ieserving  the  most  respectful  praise  in  that,  whatever  power 
»f  satire  it  may  reach  by  the  selection  and  assemblage  of 
ailing  points  of  character,  it  never  degenerates  into  carica- 
ure.  Nay,  the  terrific  force  of  blame  which  he  obtains  by 
oUecting,  as  here  in  the  profile  of  the  Knight- Alderman, 
eatures  separately  faultful  into  the  closest  focus,  depends 
>n  the  very  fact  that  they  are  not  caricatured. 

^  ["  Lights  and  Shadows  of  Portrait-Painting/'  Punch,  August  25,  1883.] 


360  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


140.  Thus  far,  the  justice  of  the  most  careful  criticisii 
may  gratefully  ratify  the  applause  with  which  the  works  c 
these  three  artists  have  been  received  by  the  British  publici 
Rapidly  I  must  now  glance  at  the  conditions  of  defec 
which  must  necessarily  occur  in  art  primarily  intended  t 
amuse  the  multitude,  and  which  can  therefore  only  be  fa 
moments  serious,  and  by  stealth  didactic.  ! 

In  the  first  place,  you  must  be  clear  about  Ptmch'i 
politics.  He  is  a  polite  Whig,  with  a  sentimental  respec 
for  the  Crown,  and  a  practical  respect  for  property.  Ht 
steadily  flatters  Lord  Palmerston,  from  his  heart  adorei 
Mr.  Gladstone ;  steadily,  but  not  virulently,  caricatures  Mr 
D'Israeli ;  violently  and  virulently  castigates  assault  upoi 
property,  in  any  kind,  and  holds  up  for  the  general  idea 
of  perfection,  to  be  aimed  at  by  all  the  children  of  heavei 
and  earth,  the  British  Hunting  Squire,  the  British  Colonel 
and  the  British  Sailor.  i 

141.  Primarily,  the  British  Hunting  Squire,  with  hil 
family.  The  most  beautiful  sketch  by  Leech  throughoui' 
his  career,  and,  on  the  whole,  in  all  Punch,  I  take  to  bt 
Miss  Alice  on  her  father's  horse ;  ^ — her,  with  three  or  foui 
more  young  Dians,  I  had  put  in  one  frame  for  you,  bul 
found  they  ran  each  other  too  hard, — being  in  each  case 
typical  of  what  Punch  thinks  every  young  lady  ought  tc 
be.  He  has  never  fairly  asked  how  far  every  young  lady 
can  be  like  them;  nor  has  he  in  a  single  instance  endea- 
voured to  represent  the  beauty  of  the  poor. 

On  the  contrary,  his  witness  to  their  degradation,  as 
inevitable  in  the  circumstances  of  their  London  life,  is 
constant,  and  for  the  most  part,  contemptuous ;  nor  can  I 
more  sternly  enforce  what  I  have  said  at  various  times  on 
that  subject^  than  by  placing  permanently  in  your  schools 

1  [^^Miss  Alice"  appears  to  be  a  slip  for  Miss  Ellen."  See  the  sketch  (entitled 
^^Gone  Away  !")  at  p.  80  in  vol.  iii.  of  John  Leech's  Pictures  of  Life  and  Character 
from  the  Collection  of  Mr.  Punch.  Other  "  young  Dians  "  may  be  seen  at  pp.  102^ 
175,  181  ;  and  at  p.  152  of  vol.  i.] 

2  [See,  for  instance,  Queen  of  the  Air,  §  121  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  401) ;  Mornings  in 
Florence,  §  95  (Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  388-389);  and  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  §§  1-7, 
(Vol.  XXXIV.).j 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


361 


he  cruelly  true  design  of  Du  Maurier,  representing  the 
^ondon  mechanic  with  his  family,  when  Mr.  Todeson  is 
sked  to  amuse  "the  dear  creatures"  at  Lady  Clara's 
■arden  tea/ 

142.  I  show  you  for  comparison  with  it,  to-day,  a  little 
>ainting  of  a  country  girl  of  our  Westmoreland  type, 
7hich  I  have  given  to  our  Coniston  children's  school,^  to 
how  our  hill  and  vale-bred  lassies  that  God  will  take  care 
f  their  good  looks  for  them,  even  though  He  may  have 
ppointed  for  them  the  toil  of  the  women  of  Sarepta  and 
>amaria,  in  being  gatherers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water.^ 

143.  I  cannot  say  how  far  with  didactic  purpose,  or 
ow  far  in  carelessly  inevitable  satire,  Punch  contrasts  with 
be  disgrace  of  street  poverty  the  beauties  of  the  London 
rawing-room, — the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  great  upper 
liddle  class,  exalted  by  the  wealth  of  the  capital,  and  of 
le  larger  manufacturing  towns. 

These  are,  with  few  exceptions,  represented  either  as 
iceiving  company,  or  reclining  on  sofas  in  extremely  ele- 
ant  morning  dresses,  and  surrounded  by  charming  children, 
jith  whom  they  are  usually  too  idle  to  play.  The  children 
e  extremely  intelligent,  and  often  exquisitely  pretty,^  yet 
ependent  for  great  part  of  their  charm  on  the  dressing  of 
leir  back  hair,  and  the  fitting  of  their  boots.  As  they 
'ow  up,  their  girlish  beauty  is  more  and  more  fixed  in  an 
ipression  of  more  or  less  self-satisfied  pride  and  practised 
3athy.  There  is  no  example  in  Punch  of  a  girl  in  society 
hose  face  expresses  humility  or  enthusiasm — except  in  mis- 
iken  directions  and  foolish  degrees.    It  is  true  that  only 

!  ^  [The  drawing,  called  "  Unsettled  Political  Convictions/'  appeared  in  Punch, 
btober  16,  1880.  The  same  drawing  is  referred  to  in  Loves  Meinie^  §  136 
ol.  XXV.  p.  128).] 

^  [This  painting  cannot  certainly  be  identified.  Ruskin  sent  it  to  the  school 
November  4,  1881,  and  it  is  described  in  the  log-book  as  ^''portrait  of  a  little 
.'1  carrying  a  bundle  of  sticks."  This  may  be  a  misdescription  of  the  '^Country 
rl,"  by  Gainsborough,  reproduced  as  the  frontispiece  to  Vol.  XXII.  Ruskin's 
■t  to  the  school  was  only  temporary;  the  picture,  whatever  it  was,  was  subse- 
ently  withdrawn  by  him,] 

^  [1  Kings  xvii.  9,  10  (compare  for  Sarepta,  Luke  iv.  26);  John  iv.  7.] 
^  [For  a  reference  to  this  passage,  see  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  91  (Vol.  XXIX. 
.  442).] 


362 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


in  these  mistaken  feelings  can  be  found  palpable  materia) 

for  jest,  and  that  much  of  Punch's  satire  is  well  intendeds  j 

and  just.  i 

144.  It  seems  to  have  been  hitherto  impossible,  when  ;l 
once  the  zest  of  satirical  humour  is  felt,  even  by  so  kind  ; 
and  genial  a  heart  as  John  Leech's,  to  restrain  it,  and  to  i 
elevate  it  into  the  playfulness  of  praise.  In  the  designs  of  I 
Richter,  of  which  I  have  so  often  spoken,^  among  scenes  of  i 
domestic  beauty  and  pathos,  he  continually  introduces  little  ( 
pieces  of  play, — such,  for  instance,  as  that  of  the  design  of  [ 
the  Wide,  Wide  World,"  in  whiclv  the  very  young  puppy^  ^ 
with  its  paws  on  its — relatively  as  young — master's  shoulder,  j 
looks  out  with  him  over  the  fence  of  their  cottage  garden,  i 
And  it  is  surely  conceivable  that  some  day  the  rich  power|  | 
of  a  true  humorist  may  be  given  to  express  more  vividty'  { 
the  comic  side  which  exists  in  many  beautiful  incidents  of  n 
daily  life,  and  refuse  at  last  to  dwell,  even  with  a  smile,i  i 
on  its  follies.  t 

145.  This,  however,   must   clearly   be   a   condition  of  p 
future  human  development,  for  hitherto  the  perfect  power  > 
of  seizing  comic  incidents  has  always  been  associated  with 
some  liking  for  ugliness,  and  some  exultation  in  disaster. 
The  law  holds — and  holds  with  no  relaxation — even  in  the 
instance  of  so  wise  and  benevolent  a  man  as  the  Swiss 
schoolmaster,  Topffer,  whose  death,  a  few  years  since,^  left  ^ 
none  to  succeed  him  in  perfection  of  pure  linear  caricature.!  jf 
He  can  do  more  with  fewer  lines  than  any  draughtsman  ,j 
known  to  me,  and  in  several  plates  of  his  Histoire  d' Albert]^  j| 
has  succeeded  in  entirely  representing  the  tenor  of  conver-ij  ^ 
sation  with  no  more  than  half  the  profile  and  one  eye  of 
the  speaker. 

He  generally  took  a  walking  tour  through  SwitzerlandJ  i 
with  his  pupils,  in  the  summer  holidays,  and  illustrated  hiS' 
exquisitely  humorous  diary  of  their  adventures  with  pen 


1  [See  above,  pp.  285,  800,  339.] 

2  [Rodolfe  Topifer  (born  at  Geneva  in  1799)  died,  however,  in  1846.  His 
Histoire  d' Albert  was  one  of  his  latest  works.]  ' 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


363 


ketches/  which  show  a  capacity  of  appreciating  beautiful 
mdscape  as  great  as  his  grotesque  faculty;  but  his  mind 
;  drawn  away  from  the  most  sublime  scene,  in  a  moment, 
3  the  difficulties  of  the  halting-place,  or  the  rascalities  of 
lie  inn  ;  and  his  power  is  never  so  marvellously  exerted  as 
1  depicting  a  group  of  roguish  guides,  shameless  beggars, 
r  hopeless  cretins. 

146.  Nevertheless,  with  these  and  such  other  materials 
s  our  European  masters  of  physiognomy  have  furnished 
1  portraiture  of  their  nations,  I  can  see  my  way  to  the 
rrangement  of  a  very  curious  series  of  illustrations  of 
haracter,  if  only  I  could  also  see  my  way  to  some  place 
^herein  to  exhibit  them. 

I  said  in  my  opening  lecture^  that  I  hoped  the  studies 
f  the  figure  initiated  by  Mr.  Richmond  might  be  found 
onsistent  with  the  slighter  practice  in  my  own  schools ; 
ad  I  must  say,  in  passing,  that  the  only  real  hindrance 
3  this,  but  at  present  an  insuperable  one,  is  want  of 
3om.  It  is  a  somewhat  characteristic  fact,  expressive  of 
le  tendencies  of  this  age,  that  Oxford  thinks  nothing  of 
oending  £150,000  for  the  elevation  and  ornature,  in  a  style 
>  inherently  corrupt  as  it  is  un-English,  of  the  rooms  for 
lie  torture  and  shame  of  her  scholars,^  which  to  all  practical 
urposes  might  just  as  well  have  been  inflicted  on  them 
I  her  college  halls,  or  her  professors'  drawing-rooms ;  but 
lat  the  only  place  where  her  art -workmen  can  be  taught 
3  draw,  is  the  cellar  of  her  old  Taylor  buildings,  and  the 
ply  place  where  her  art  professor  can  store  the  cast  of  a 
tatue,  is  his  own  private  office  in  the  gallery  above.* 

147.  Pending  the  now  indispensable  addition  of  some 

^  [For  other  references  to  the  Voyages  en  Zigzag;  ou,  Excursions  d'un  Pensionnat 
's  les  Cantons  Suisses  et  sur  le  revers  Italien  des  Alpes  (Paris,  1843 ;  a  second 
)llected  series,  1853),  see  Vol.  XXV.  p.  115  n.] 

2  [See  above,  p.  268.] 

3  [The  New  Examination  Schools  in  the  High  Street,  erected  1876-1882  from 
jsigns,  in  the  Renaissance  style,  by  T.  G.  Jackson,  R.A.    Compare  below,  p.  476.] 

*  [Compare  the  Introduction;  above,  p.  Ivi.  The  Taylor  Buildings,"  which 
mtain  the  University  Galleries  as  well  as  the  Taylor  Institution,  are  so  called 
om  the  bequest  of  Sir  Robert  Taylor  (1788).] 


364  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


rude  workroom  to  the  Taylor  galleries,  in  which  study  oi 
the  figure  may  be  carried  on  under  a  competent  master,  Ii 
have  lent,  from  the  drawings  belonging  to  the  St.  George's! 
Guild,  such  studies  of  Venetian  pictures  as  may  form  the 
taste  of  the  figure- student  in  general  composition,^  and  l| 
have  presented  to  the  Ruskin  schools  twelve  principal  draw- 
ings out  of  Miss  Alexander's  Tuscan  book,^  which  may  be 
standards  of  method,  in  drawing  from  the  life,  to  students 
capable  of  as  determined  industry.  But,  no  less  for  the 
better  guidance  of  the  separate  figure  class  in  the  room 
which  I  hope  one  day  to  see  built,  than  for  immediate 
help  in  such  irregular  figure  study  as  may  be  possible 
under  present  conditions,  I  find  myself  grievously  in  want 
of  such  a  grammar  of  the  laws  of  harmony  in  the  human 
form  and  face  as  may  be  consistent  with  whatever  accurate 
knowledge  of  elder  races  may  have  been  obtained  by  recent 
anthropology,  and  at  the  same  time  authoritative  in  its 
statement  of  the  effect  on  human  expression,  of  the  various 
mental  states  and  passions.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  by 
arranging  in  groups  capable  of  easy  comparison,  the  examples 
of  similar  expression  given  by  the  masters  whose  work  we 
have  been  reviewing,  we  may  advance  further  such  a  science 
of  physiognomy  as  will  be  morally  useful,  than  by  any 
quantity  of  measuring  of  savage  crania:  and  if,  therefore, 
among  the  rudimentary  series  in  the  art  schools  you  find, 
before  1  can  get  the  new  explanatory  catalogues  printed,^ 
some  more  or  less  systematic  groups  of  heads  collected  out 
of  Punch,  you  must  not  think  that  I  am  doing  this  merely 
for  your  amusement,  or  that  such  examples  are  beneath 
the  dignity  of  academical  instruction.  My  own  belief  is 
that  the  difference  between  the  features  of  a  good  and  a 
bad  servant,  of  a  churl  and  a  gentleman,  is  a  much  more  j 
useful  and  interesting  subject  of  inquiry  than  the  gradations 

1  [See  Vol.  XXI.  p.  306  (in  the  ''Long  Cabinet").]  j 

2  lUd.,  p.  306  (the  ''Francesca  Cabinet").] 

^  [The  new  catalogues  were  never  prepared.  There  is  a  bundle  of  cartoons  from 
Tunch  in  the  Ruskin  Drawing  School  (see  Vol.  XXI.  p.  308),  but  Ruskin  did  not 
arrange  or  frame  them.]  j 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE  365 

)f  snub  nose  or  flat  forehead  which  became  extinct  with 
he  Dodo,  or  the  insertions  of  muscle  and  articulations  of 
oint  which  are  common  to  the  flesh  of  all  humanity. 

148.  Returning  to  our  immediate  subject,  and  consider- 
ng  Punch  as  the  expression  of  the  popular  voice,  which 
le  virtually  is,  and  even  somewhat  obsequiously,  is  it  not 
sronderful  that  he  has  never  a  word  to  say  for  the  British 
aanufacturer,  and  that  the  true  citizen  of  his  own  city  is 
epresented  by  him  only  under  the  types,  either  of  Sir 
^ompey  BedelP  or  of  the  more  tranquil  magnate  and 
)otentate,  the  bulwark  of  British  constitutional  principles 
nd  initiator  of  British  private  enterprise,  Mr.  John  Smith, 
/hose  biography  is  given  with  becoming  reverence  by  Miss 
ngelow,  in  the  last  but  one  of  her  Stories  told  to  a  Child  ?  ^ 
Ind  is  it  not  also  surely  some  overruling  power  in  the 
iature  of  things,  quite  other  than  the  desire  of  his  readers, 
/hich  compels  Mr.  Punch,  when  the  squire,  the  colonel, 
nd  the  admiral  are  to  be  at  once  expressed,  together  with 
11  that  they  legislate  or  fight  for,  in  the  symbolic  figure 
»f  the  nation,  to  represent  the  incarnate  John  Bull  always, 
s  a  farmer, — never  as  a  manufacturer  or  shopkeeper,  and 
0  conceive  and  exhibit  him  rather  as  paymaster  for  the 
aults  of  his  neighbours,  than  as  watching  for  opportunity 
f  gain  out  of  their  follies  ? 

149.  It  had  been  well  if  either  under  this  accepted, 
bough  now  antiquated,  type,  or  under  the  more  poetical 
ymbols  of  Britannia,  or  the  British  Lion,  Punch  had  ven- 
ured  oftener  to  intimate  the  exact  degree  in  which  the 
ation  was  following  its  ideal;  and  marked  the  occasions 
/hen  Britannia's  crest  began  too  fatally  to  lose  its  resem- 
lance  to  Athena's,  and  liken  itself  to  an  ordinary  cocks- 
omb, — or  when  the  British  lion  had — of  course  only  for 

moment,  and  probably  in  pecuniary  difliculties — dropped 
is  tail  between  his  legs. 

^  [A  favourite  character  in  Du  Maurier's  Society  Pictures :  see,  for  instance, 
uwc/fc,  April  28  and  November  10,  1883.] 

2  ["The  Life  of  Mr.  John  Smith,"  pp.  367-879  in  Stories  told  to  a  Child,  "By 
16  author  of  'Studies  for  Stories/"  1865.] 


366  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


150.  But  the  aspects  under  which  either  British  lion 
GaUic  eagle,  or  Kussian  bear  have  been  regarded  by  ouii 
contemplative  serial,  are  unfortunately  dependent  on  the 
fact  that  all  his  three  great  designers  are,  in  the  most 
narrow  sense,  London  citizens.    I  have   said  that  everj 
great  man  belongs  not  only  to  his  own  city,  but  to  hh 
own  village.^    The  artists  of  Punch  have  no  village  tc 
belong  to;  for  them,  the  street  corner  is  the  face  of  the 
whole  earth,  and  the  two  only  quarters  of  the  heavenlj 
horizon  are  the  east  and  west — End.    And  although  Leeeh'si 
conception  of  the  Distinguished  Foreigner,  Du  Maurier'sl 
of  the  Herr  Professor,^  and  TennieFs  of  La  Liberte,  or  Lai 
France,  are  all  extremely  true  and  delightful, — to  the  super 
ficial  extent  of  the  sketch  by  Dickens  in  Mrs,  LiiTiper^^ 
Lodgings,^ — they  are,  effectively,  all  seen  with  Mrs.  Lirri 
pers  eyes;  they  virtually  represent  of  the  Continent  littk 
more  than  the  upper  town  of  Boulogne ;  nor  has  anything 
yet  been  done  by  all  the  wit  and  all  the  kindness  of  thest 
great  popular   designers   to   deepen   the   reliance  of  any 
European  nation  on  the  good  qualities  of  its  neighbours.  I 

151.  You  no  doubt  have  at  the  Union  the  most  inte- 
resting and  beautiful  series  of  the  Tenniel  cartoons  whicl^ 
have  been  collectively  published,  with  the  explanation  oi 
their  motives.  If  you  begin  with  No.  38,  you  will  find  t 
consecutive  series  of  ten  extremely  forcible  drawings,  castf 
ing  the  utmost  obloquy  in  the  power  of  the  designer  upon 
the  French  Emperor,  the  Pope,  and  the  Italian  clergy,  and 
alike  discourteous  to  the  head  of  the  nation  which  had 
fought  side  by  side  with  us  at  Inkerman,  and  impious  inj 
its  representation  of  the  Catholic  power  to  which  Italy 
owed,   and   still   owes,   whatever   has    made   her  glorious 

*  Above,  §  65  [p.  311]. 


1  [For  another  reference  to  this  type,  see  Vol.  XVI.  p.  277  n.] 

2  [For  other  references  to  the  French  sketches  in  Mrs.  Lirripers  Legacy  (the 
sequel  to  Mrs.  Lirripers  Lodgings),  see  Proserpina,  Vol.  XXV.  p.  455  n. ;  and  se* 
also  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  475.] 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


367 


mong  the  nations  of  Christendom,  or  happy  among  the 
amiUes  of  the  earth.^ 

Among  them  you  will  find  other  two,  representing  our 
fa.rs  with  China,  and  the  triumph  of  our  missionary  manner 
f  compelling  free  trade  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet: 
/hile,  for  the  close  and  consummation  of  the  series,  you 
/ill  see  the  genius  and  valour  of  your  country  figuratively 
ammed  in  the  tableau,  subscribed, — 

"John  Bull  defends  his  pudding." 

s  this  indeed  then  the  final  myth  of  English  heroism, 
ito  which  King  Arthur,  and  St.  George,  and  Britannia, 
nd  the  British  Lion  are  all  collated,  concluded,  and  per- 
^cted  by  Evolution,  in  the  literal  words  of  Carlyle,  "like 
}ur  whale  cubs  combined  by  boiling"?^  Do  you  wish 
our  Queen  in  future  to  style  herself  Placentae,  instead  of 
'idei,  Defensor  ?  ^  and  is  it  to  your  pride,  to  your  hope, 
r  even  to  your  pleasure,  that  this  once  sacred  as  well 
3  sceptred  island*  of  yours,  in  whose  second  capital  city 
■onstantine  was  crowned  ;  ^ — to  whose  shores  St.  Augustine 
ad  St.  Columba  brought  benediction ; — who  gave  her  Lion- 
earts  to  the  Tombs  of  the  East, — her  Pilgrim  Fathers  to 
le  Cradle  of  the  West  \ — who  has  wrapped  the  sea  round 

1  [Cartoons  from  Punch,  by  John  Tenniel^  First  Series.  The  subjects  referred 
are : — 

No.  88,  *^^New  Elgin  Marbles"  (Lord  Elgin  compelling  the  Emperor  of  China 
•  pay  the  indemnity  for  the  last  China  war — November  1860).  No.  39,  "  St.  George 
id  the  Chinese  Dragon." 

No.  40,  "The  Eldest  Son  of  the  Church"  (the  Pope  in  bed  in  a  night-cap, 
ie  Emperor  Napoleon  trying  on  the  Papal  Crown— December  1860).  No.  43,  A 
ood  Offer"  (Garibaldi  offering  a  cap  of  Liberty  to  "  Papa  Pius  "—September  1860). 
0.  44,  "The  Hero  and  the  Saint"  (the  latter,  a  ruffianly  priest  carrying  a  bottle 
belled  "  Blood  of  St.  Januarius "  and  a  canvas  labelled  "  Winking  Picture "  ; 
aribaldi,  in  heroic  attitude,  bidding  him  be  gone — September  1860). 

No.  45,  "The  Two  Sick  Men"  (the  Emperor  Napoleon  offering  gruel  to  the 
3pe  and  the  Sultan — August  1860). 

No.  47,  "John  Bull  guards  his  Pudding"  (the  Volunteer  movement  and  anti- 
•ench  feeling— December  31,  1859).  For  another  reference  to  this  last,  see  Fors 
'avigera,  Letter  93  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  469).] 

2  [See  below,  p.  426.] 

^  Compare  above,  p.  209.] 
^  Richard  11. j  Act  ii.  sc.  1.] 
^  [See  above,  p.  225.] 


368 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


her  for  her  mantle,  and  breathes  with  her  strong  bosom  th 
air  of  every  sign  in  heaven ; — is  it  to  your  good  plea 
sure  that  the  Hero-children  born  to  her  in  these  latte 
days  should  write  no  loftier  legend  on  their  shields  thai 
"  John  Bull  defends  his  pudding  "  ? 

152.  1  chanced  only  the  other  day  on  a  minor,  yet 
to  my  own  mind,  very  frightful  proof  of  the  extent  t( 
which  this  caitiff  symbol  is  fastening  itself  in  the  popula 
mind.    I  was  in  search  of  some  extremely  pastoral  musicai 
instrument,  whereby  to  regulate  the  songs  of  our  Conis 
ton  village  children,  without  the  requirement  of  peculia*' 
skill  either  in  master  or  monitor.    But  the  only  means  o 
melody  offered  to  me  by  the  trade  of  the  neighbourhoocf 
was  this  so-called     harmonicon," — purchaseable,  according 
to  your  present  notions,  cheaply,  for  a  shilling;  and  wit! 
this  piece  of  cheerful  mythology  on  its  lid  gratis,  whereir 
you  see  what   '*  Gradus  ad   Parnassum "   we  prepare  foi 
the  rustic  mind,  and  that  the  virtue  and  the  jollity  on 
England  are  vested  only  in  the  money-bag  in  each  haiK^j 
of  him.    I  shall  place  this  harmonicon  lid  in  your  schools,' 
among  my  examples  of  what  we  call  liberal  education,— 
and,  with  it,  what  instances  I  can  find  of  the  way  Florence 
Siena,  or  Venice  taught  their  people  to  regard  themselves 

153.  For,  indeed,  in  many  a  past  year,  it  has  ever} 
now  and  then  been  a  subject  of  recurring  thought  to  me 
what  such  a  genius  as  that  of  Tenniel  would  have  done 
for  us,  had  we  asked  the  best  of  it,  and  had  the  feeling 
of  the  nation  respecting  the  arts,  as  a  record  of  its  honourj 
been  like  that  of  the  Italians  in  their  proud  days.^  Tq 
some  extent,  the  memory  of  our  bravest  war  has  beer 
preserved  for  us  by  the  pathetic  force  of  Mrs.  Butler;' 
but  her  conceptions  are  realistic  only,  and  rather  of  thrill- 
ing episodes  than  of  great  military  principle  and  thought. 

1  [This,  however,  was  not  done.] 

2  [Punch,  November  17,  1883,  had  a  skit,  following  up  this  suggestion,  entitled 
''The  'Fireside'  at  Venice;  or.  How  would  it  have  been?"] 

3  [For  a  reference  to  the  picture  of  ''Quatre  Bras"  by  Miss  Elizabeth  Thompson 
(now  Lady  Butler),  see  Vol.  XIV.  pp.  307,  308.] 


V.  THE  FIRESIDE 


369 


n  the  contrary,  Tenniel  has  much  of  the  largeness  and 
j  mbolic  mystery  of  imagination  which  belong  to  the 
.•eat  leaders  of  classic  art:  in  the  shadowy  masses  and 
i/eeping  lines  of  his  great  compositions,  there  are  ten- 
(mcies  which  might  have  won  his  adoption  into  the  school 
<  Tintoret;  and  his  scorn  of  whatever  seems  to  him  dis- 
])nest  or  contemptible  in  religion,  would  have  translated 
j  elf  into  awe  in  the  presence  of  its  vital  power. 

I  gave  you,  when  first  I  came  to  Oxford,  Tintoret's 
jcture  of  the  Doge  Mocenigo,  with  his  divine  spiritual 
{tendants,  in  the  cortile  of  St.  Mark's.^  It  is  surely  our 
(7n  fault,  more  than  Mr.  Tenniel's,  if  the  best  portraits 
]  can  give  us  of  the  heads  of  our  English  government 
jould  be  rather  on  the  occasion  of  their  dinner  at  Green- 
^  ch  than  their  devotion  at  St.  Paul's. 

154.  My  time  has  been  too  long  spent  in  carping; — but 
yt  the  faults  which  I  have  pointed  out  were  such  as  could 
sircely  occur  to  you  without  some  such  indication,  and 
nich  gravely  need  your  observance,  and,  as  far  as  you  are 
{countable  for  them,  your  repentance.  I  can  best  briefly, 
i  conclusion,  define,  what  I  would  fain  have  illustrated  at 
Iigth,  the  charm,  in  this  art  of  the  Fireside,  which  you 
t^itly  feel,  and  have  every  rational  ground  to  rejoice  in. 
^  ith  whatever  restriction  you  should  receive  the  flattery, 
ed  with  whatever  caution  the  guidance,  of  these  great 
i  istrators  of  your  daily  life,  this  at  least  you  may  thank- 
f'ly  recognize  in  the  sum  of  their  work,  that  it  contains 
te  evidence  of  a  prevalent  and  crescent  beauty  and  energy 
il  the  youth  of  our  day,  which  may  justify  the  most  dis- 
catented  "laudator  temporis  acti"^  in  leaving  the  future 
Ippily  in  their  hands.  The  witness  of  ancient  art  points 
c:en  to  a  general  and  equal  symmetry  of  body  and  mind 
i  well-trained  races ;  but  at  no  period,  so  far  as  I  am 
ale  to  gather  by  the  most  careful  comparison  of  existing 
p'traiture,   has  there  ever  been  a  loveliness  so  variably 


^  [The  picture  was,  however,  afterwards  removed:  see  Vol.  XXI.  p.  170.] 
*  [Horace,  Ars  Poetica,  173.] 

XXXIII.  2  A 


370  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


refined,  so  modestly  and  kindly  virtuous,  so  innocently  fai 
tastic,  and  so  daintily  pure,  as  the  present  girl-beauty  (' 
our  British  Islands :  and  whatever,  for  men  now  enterir 
on  the  main  battle  of  life,  may  be  the  confused  temptatioi 
or  inevitable  errors  of  a  period  of  moral  doubt  and  soci 
change,  my  own  experience  of  help  already  received  froi 
the  younger  members  of  this  University,^  is   enough  ij 
assure  me  that  there  has  been  no  time,  in  all  the  pride  | 
the  past,  when  their  country  might  more  serenely  trust 
the  glory  of  her  youth ; — when  her  prosperity  was  mojj 
secure  in  their  genius,  or  her  honour  in  their  hearts.  ' 

^  [For  a  reference  to  one  of  the  pupils  referred  to  here,  see  Ruskin's  Intii 
duction  to  W.  G.  Collingwood's  Limestone  Alps  of  Savoy  (Vol.  XXVI.  p.  568).]  f 


i 


LECTURE  VI 


THE  HILL-SIDE 
GEORGE  ROBSON  AND  COPLEY  FIELDING 
(Delivered  17 tk  and  2181  November  1883) 

1).  In  the  five  preceding  lectures  given  this  year,  I  have 
e  leavoured  to  generalize  the  most  noteworthy  facts  respect- 
ii  the  religious,  legendary,  classic,  and,  in  two  kinds, 
nestic,  art  of  England.  There  remains  yet  to  be  defined 
%  far-away,  and,  in  a  manner,  outcast,  school,  which 
ongs  as  yet  wholly  to  the  present  century ;  and  which, 
were  to  trust  to  appearances,  would  exclusively  and 
ever  belong  to  it,  neither  having  been  known  before 
time,  nor  surviving  afterwards, — the  art  of  landscape. 
Not  known  before, — except  as  a  trick,  or  a  pastime ; 
surviving  afterwards,  because  we  seem  straight  on  the 
V  to  pass  our  lives  in  cities  twenty  miles  wide,  and  to 
7el  from  each  of  them  to  the  next,  underground:  out- 
t  now,  even  while  it  retains  some  vague  hold  on  old- 
fa  lioned  people's  minds,  since  the  best  existing  examples 
it  are  placed  by  the  authorities  of  the  National  Gallery 
a  cellar^  lighted  by  only  two  windows,  and  those  at  the 
b(tom  of  a  well,  blocked  by  four  dead  brick  walls  fifty 
fet  high. 

156.  Notwithstanding  these  discouragements,  I  am  still 
ided  to  carry  out  the  design  in  which  the  so-called 


w. 


[Ruskin's  statement  that  the  Turner  water-colours  are  consigned  to  a  cellar  " 
tie  National  Gallery  (compare  above,  p.  290)  has  often  been  challenged  as  iu- 
rate ;  the  rooms  in  which  drawings  are  exhibited  to  the  public  being  on  the 
iid  floor  and  not  ill-lighted.  He  refers^  however,  not  to  those  rooms,  but  to 
uner  room  at  the  back,  where  many  other  drawings  by  Turner  are  still  (1907) 
sd.    Of  this  room,  Ruskin's  description  is  precisely  accurate.] 

371 


I 


372 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


Ruskin  Schools  were  founded,  that  of  arranging  in  themi 
code  of  elementary  practice,  which  should  secure  the  sH 
of  the  student  in  the  department  of  landscape  before  i 
entered  on  the  branches  of  art  requiring  higher  genii. 
Nay,  I  am  more  than  ever  minded  to  fulfil  my  forirr 
purpose  now,  in  the  exact  degree  in  which  I  see 
advantages  of  such  a  method  denied  or  refused  in  otrr 
academies ;  and  the  beauty  of  natural  scenery  increasing r 
in  danger  of  destruction  by  the  gross  interests  and  d- 
quieting  pleasures  of  the  citizen.  For  indeed,  as  I  befc; 
stated  to  you,^  when  first  I  undertook  the  duties  of  tl'j 
professorship,  my  own  personal  liking  for  landscape  maj 
me  extremely  guarded  in  recommending  its  study.  I  orjjr 
gave  three  lectures  on  landscape  in  six  years,  and  I  ne^' 
published  them ;  ^  my  hope  and  endeavour  was  to  conne|; 
the  study  of  Nature  for  you  with  that  of  History;  i 
make  you  interested  in  Greek  legend  as  well  as  in  Gre: 
lakes  and  limestone  ;  to  acquaint  you  with  the  relations  f 
northern  hills  and  rivers  to  the  schools  of  Christian  Tt- 
ology ;  and  of  Renaissance  town-life  to  the  rage  of  its  il- 
fidelity.  But  I  have  done  enough, — and  more  than  enou  i 
— according  to  my  time  of  life,  in  these  directions;  a  I 
now,  justified,  I  trust,  in  your  judgment,  from  the  charj 
of  weak  concession  to  my  own  predilections,  I  shall  arranj 
the  exercises  required  consistently  from  my  drawing-class  , 
with  quite  primary  reference  to  landscape  art;  and  teai 
the  early  philosophy  of  beauty,  under  laws  liable  to  no  d- 
pute  by  human  passion,  but  secure  in  the  grace  of  Ear1, 
and  light  of  Heaven. 

157.  And  I  wish  in  the  present  lecture  to  define  to  yi 
the  nature  and  meaning  of  landscape  art,  as  it  arose  i 
England  eighty  years  ago,  without  reference  to  the  gre|t 
master  whose  works  have  been  the  principal  subject  of 
own  enthusiasm.    I  have  always  stated  distinctly  that  t3 

1  [See  above,  §  2,  p.  268.] 

2  [The  Lectures  on  Landscape  (delivered  in  1871)  were  ultimately  published  r 
Ruskin  in  1898  :  see  now  Vol.  XXII.  pp.  1  seq.'] 


1 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE 


373 


inius  of  Turner  was  exceptional,  both  in  its  kind  and  in 
5  height:^  and  although  his  elementary  modes  of  work 
e  beyond  dispute  authoritative,  and  the  best  that  can  be 
,ven  for  example  and  exercise,  the  general  tenor  of  his 
(jsign  is  entirely  beyond  the  acceptance  of  common  know- 
dge,  and  even  of  safe  sympathy.  For  in  his  extreme 
•  dness,  and  in  the  morbid  tones  of  mind  out  of  which  it 
;ose,  he  is  one  with  Byron ^  and  Goethe;  and  is  no  more 
i  be  held  representative  of  general  English  landscape  art 
1an  Childe  Harold  or  Faust  are  exponents  of  the  total 
]ve  of  Nature  expressed  in  English  or  German  literature. 

take  a  single  illustrative  instance,  there  is  no  foreground 
(  Turner's  in  which  you  can  find  a  flower.^ 

158.  In  some  respects,  indeed,  the  vast  strength  of  this 
iifoUowable  Eremite  of  a  master  was  crushing,  instead  of 
rifying,  to  the  English  schools.  All  the  true  and  strong 
len  who  were  his  contemporaries  shrank  from  the  slightest 
J  tempt  at  rivalry  with  him  on  his  own  lines ; — and  his 
im  lines  were  cast  far.  But  for  him,  Stanfield  might 
Ive  sometimes  painted  an  Alpine  valley,  or  a  Biscay 
5  3rm;  but  the  moment  there  was  any  question  of  render- 
i  y  magnitude,  or  terror,  every  effort  became  puny  beside 
'irner,  and  Stanfield  meekly  resigned  himself  to  potter  all 
h  life  round  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  paint  the  Needles  on 
(6  side,  and  squalls  off  Cowes  on  the  other.  In  like 
1  inner,  Copley  Fielding  in  his  young  days  painted  vigor- 
(  sly  in  oil,  and  showed  promise  of  attaining  considerable 
canity  in  classic  composition;  but  the  moment  Turner's 
(irden  of  Hesperides  and  Building  of  Carthage  appeared 
i  the  Academy,*  there  was  an  end  to  ambition  in  that 
c^ection;  and  thenceforth  Fielding  settled  down  to  his 
ciet  presidency  of  the  old   Water-Colour  Society,^  and 

^  [See,  for  instance.  Vol.  V.  p.  353,  and  Vol.  XXVII.  p.  150 ;  and  compare 
tow,  p.  532.] 

2  [Compare  Vol.  XIII.  p.  14-3  ;  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  §  73  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 
'  [Compare  below,  §  196  (p.  396),  and  Vol.  XIII.  pp.  519,  520.] 
*  [In  1806  (at  tlie  British  Institution)  and  1815  (R.A.)  respectively.] 
^  [From  1831  to  1855  :  compare  Prceterita,  i.  §  238.] 


374 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


painted,  in  unassuming  replicas,  his  passing  showers  in  tl 
Highlands,  and  sheep  on  the  South  Downs.  < 

159.  Which  are,  indeed,  for  most  of  us,  much  mo' 
appropriate  objects  of  contemplation;  and  the  old  wate 
colour  room  at  that  time,  adorned  yearly  with  the  comple 
year's  labour  of  Fielding,  Robson,  De  Wint,  Barret,  Proi] 
and  William  Hunt,  presented  an  aggregate  of  unaffectc 
pleasantness  and  truth,  the  like  of  which,  if  you  could  no 
see,  after  a  morning  spent  among  the  enormities  of  luscioi 
and  exotic  art  which  frown  or  glare  along  your  miles 
exhibition  wall,  would  really  be  felt  by  you  to  possess  tl 
charm  of  a  bouquet  of  bluebells  and  cowslips,  amidst  a  pri: 
show  of  cactus  and  orchid  from  the  hothouses  of  Kew.^ 

The  root  of  this  delightfulness  was  an  extremely  ra 
sincerity  in  the  personal  pleasure  which  all  these  men  too 
not  in  their  own  pictures,  but  in  the  subjects  of  them— 
form  of  enthusiasm  which,  while  it  was  as  simple,  was  al 
as  romantic,  in  the  best  sense,  as  the  sentiment  of  a  your 
girl :  and  whose  nature  I  can  the  better  both  define  ar 
certify  to  you,  because  it  was  the  impulse  to  which  I  owe 
the  best  force  of  my  own  life,  and  in  sympathy  with  whi( 
I  have  done  or  said  whatever  of  saying  or  doing  in  it  h. 
been  useful  to  others. 

160.  When  I  spoke,  in  this  year's  first  lecture,  ' 
Rossetti,  as  the  chief  intellectual  force  in  the  establishmei 
of  the  modern  Romantic  School ;  and  again  in  the  secor 
lecture  promised,-  at  the  end  of  our  course,  the  coUectic 
of  the  evidence  of  Romantic  passion  in  all  our  good  Englij 
art,  you  will  find  it  explained  at  the  same  time  that  I  c 
not  use  the  word  Romantic  as  opposed  to  Classic,  but  ; 
opposed  to  the  prosaic  characters  of  selfishness  and  stupidit 
in  all  times,  and  among  all  nations.  I  do  not  think  < 
King  Arthur  as  opposed  to  Theseus,  or  to  Valerius,  bi 
to  Alderman  Sir  Robert,  and  Mr.  John  Smith.^  An 
therefore  I  opposed  the  child-like  love  of  beautiful  thing 

^  [Compare  Ruskiu's  description  of  these  exhibitions  in  Vol.  XIV.  pp.  389-39^ 

2  [See  above,  pp.  269,  291.1 

3  [See  above,  pp.  Po'd,  365.]  ' 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE  375 

i:  even  the  least  of  our  English  Modern  Painters,  from  the 
fit  page  of  the  book  I  wrote  about  them  to  the  last, — 
Greek  Art,  to  what  seemed  to  me  then  (and  in  a  certain 
sise  is  demonstrably  to  me  now)  too  selfish  or  too  formal, 
and  in  Teutonic  Art,  to  what  was  cold  in  a  far  worse 
ise,  either  by  boorish  dulness  or  educated  affectation/ 

161.  I  think  the  two  best  central  types  of  Non-Komance, 
c  the  power  of  Absolute  Vulgarity  in  selfishness,  as  dis- 
t  guished  from  the  eternal  dignity  of  Reverence  and  Love, 

)  stamped  for  you  on  the  two  most  finished  issues  of 
jur  Enghsh  currency  in  the  portraits  of  Henry  the  Eighth^ 
d  Charles  the  Second.    There  is  no  interfering  element 
the  vulgarity  of  them,  no  pardon  to  be  sought  in  their 
v^erty,  ignorance,  or  weakness.    Both  are  men  of  strong 
jwers  of  mind,  and  both  well  informed  in  all  particulars 
human  knowledge  possible  to  them.    But  in  the  one 
J  a  see  the  destroyer,  according  to  his  power,  of  English 
igion;  and,  in  the  other,  the  destroyer,  according  to  his 
jwer,  of  English  morality:  culminating  types  to  you  of 
^latever  in  the  spirit,  or  dis-spirit,  of  succeeding  ages,  robs 
()d,  or  dishonours  man. 

162.  I  named  to  you,  as  an  example  of  the  unromantic 
a;  which  was  assailed  by  the  pre-Raphaelites,  Vandyke's 
s  itch  of  the  "  Miraculous  Draught  of  Fishes."  ^  Very  near 
ii  in  the  National  Gallery,  hangs  another  piscatory  sub- 
j' t,^^  by  Teniers,  which  I  will  ask  you  carefully  also  to 
e  amine  as  a  perfect  type  of  the  Unromantic  Art  which  was 

;ailed  by  the  gentle  enthusiasm  of  the  English  School  of 

*  No.  817,  "Teniers*  Chateau  at  Perck."  The  expressions  touching 
want  of  light  in  it  are  a  little  violent,  being  strictly  accurate  only  of 

h  pictures  of  the  Dutch  school  as  Vanderneer's  "  Evening  Landscape," 

I,  and  "Canal  Scene,"  732. 


^  [See,  for  instance, — for  the  formalism  of  Greek  art,  Vol.  V.  p.  268 ;  and  for 
boorishness  and     barren  technique"  of  the  Dutch,  Flemish,  and  German  art 
:e  collectivelv  called      Teutonic Vol.  III.  p.    90,  Vol.  V.  p.   109,  and 
I.  VIL  p.  364.] 

^  [Compare,  for  the  coins  of  Henrv  VIII,  Ruskin's  notes  on  the  coins  in  the 
ffield  Museum  :  Vol.  XXX.  pp.  276-277.] 
"  ';See  above,  p.  289.] 

The  two  pictures  are  now  (1907)  on  opposite  walls  in  Room  xiii.J 


=  0 


376 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


Landscape.  It  represents  a  few  ordinary  Dutch  houses,  ai 
ordinary  Dutch  steeple  or  two, — some  still  more  ordinary 
Dutch  trees, — and  most  ordinary  Dutch  clouds,  assemblec! 
in  contemplation  of  an  ordinary  Dutch  duck-pond;  or,  per- 
haps, in  respect  of  its  size,  we  may  more  courteously  cal; 
it  a  goose-pond.  All  these  objects  are  painted  either  gre} 
or  brown,  and  the  atmosphere  is  of  the  kind  which  look; 
not  merely  as  if  the  sun  had  disappeared  for  the  day,  bull 
as  if  he  had  gone  out  altogether,  and  left  a  stable  lani 
tern  instead.  The  total  effect  having  appeared,  even  to  the| 
painter  s  own  mind,  at  last  little  exhilatory,  he  has  enlivenedj 
it  by  three  figures  on  the  brink  of  the  goose-pond, — twc 
gentlemen  and  a  lady, — standing  all  three  perfectly  upright 
side  by  side,  in  court  dress,  the  gentlemen  with  expansivt 
boots,  and  all  with  conical  hats  and  high  feathers.  In 
order  to  invest  these  characters  with  dramatic  interest,  a 
rustic  fisherman  presents  to  them  as  a  tribute, — or,  perhaps., 
exhibits  as  a  natural  curiosity,  a  large  fish,  just  elicited  from 
the  goose-pond  by  his  adventurous  companions,  who  have 
waded  into  the  middle  of  it,  every  one  of  them,  with  sin- 
gular exactitude,  up  to  tlie  calf  of  his  leg.  The  principle.^ 
of  National  Gallery  arrangement  of  course  put  this  picture 
on  the  line,  while  Tintoret*  and  Gainsborough  are  hung 
out  of  sight ;  but  in  this  instance  I  hold  myself  fortunate 
in  being  able  to  refer  you  to  an  example,  so  conveniently 
examinable,  of  the  utmost  stoop  and  densest  level  of  human 
stupidity  yet  fallen  to  by  any  art  in  which  some  degree 
of  manual  dexterity  is  essential. 

163.  This  crisis  of  degradation,  you  will  observe,  takes 

*  The  large  new  Tintoret  wholly  so,  and  the  largest  Gainsborough,  the 
best  in  England  known  to  me,  used  merely  for  wall  furniture  at  the  top 
of  the  room.i 


1  [The  ^Har^e  new  Tintoret"  is  No.  1180,  "Christ  washing  His  Disciples'  Feet," 
acquired  in  1882.  It  is  now  (1907)  better  shown— in  the  E.  Hall,  at  the  foot  of 
the  stairs  ;  whilst  another  Tintoret  ("  The  Milky  Way,"  No.  1818),  acquired  since 
Ruskin  wrote,  is  on  the  line  in  Room  vii.  The  "largest  Gainsborough"  is  the 
group  of  "The  Baillie  Family"  (No.  789),  now  (1907)  well  seen  in  the  Western 
Vestibule  of  the  Gallery ;  for  another  reference  to  the  picture,  see  the  "  Address  to 
Academy  Girls"  in  Vol.  XXXIV.] 


1 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE 


877 


lace  at  the  historical  moment  when  by  the  concurrent 
ower  of  avaricious  trade  on  one  side,  and  unrestrained 
ixury  on  the  other,  the  idea  of  any  but  an  earthly  interest, 
id  any  but  proud  or  carnal  pleasures,  had  been  virtually 
Ofaced  throughout  Europe  ;  and  men,  by  their  resolute  self- 
Peking,  had  literally  at  last  ostracised  the  Spiritual  Sun 
cm  Heaven,  and  Hved  by  little  more  than  the  snuff  of 
le  wick  of  their  own  mental  stable  lantern. 

164.  The  forms  of  romantic  art  hitherto  described  in 
lis  course  of  lectures,  were  all  distinctly  reactionary  against 
tie  stupor  of  this  Stygian  pool,  brooded  over  by  Batavian 
)g.  But  the  first  signs  of  re-awakening  in  the  vital  power 
f  imagination  were,  long  before,  seen  in  landscape  art. 
lot  the  utmost  strength  of  the  great  figure  painters  could 
reak  through  the  bonds  of  the  flesh.  Reynolds  vainly  tried 
)  substitute  the  age  of  Innocence  for  the  experience  of 
jleligion — the  true  genius  at  his  side  remained  always  Cupid 
jnbinding  the  girdle  of  Venus.^  Gainsborough  knew  no  god- 
esses  other  than  Mrs.  Graham  or  Mrs.  Siddons;  Vandyke 
nd  Rubens,  than  the  beauties  of  the  court,  or  the  graces 
f  its  corpulent  Mythology.  But  at  last  there  arose,  and 
rose  inevitably,  a  feeling  that,  if  not  any  more  in  Heaven, 
t  least  in  the  solitary  places  of  the  earth,  there  was  a 
leasure  to  be  found  based  neither  on  pride  nor  sensuality. 

165.  Among  the  least  attractive  of  the  mingled  examples 
1  your  school-alcove,  you  will  find  a  quiet  pencil-drawing 
'f  a  sunset  at  Rome,  seen  from  beneath  a  deserted  arch, 
whether  of  Triumph  or  of  Peace.^  Its  modest  art-skill  is 
lestricted  almost  exclusively  to  the  expression  of  warm  light 
|a  the  low  harmony  of  evening;  but  it  differs  wholly  from 
he  learned  compositions  and  skilled  artifices  of  former 
)ainting  by  its  purity  of  unaffected  pleasure  and  rest  in 
he  little  that  is  given.  Here,  at  last,  we  feel,  is  an  honest 
pnghshman,  who  has  got  away  out  of  all  the  Camere,  and 

^  [For  other  references  to  the  "Age  of  Innocence"  (No.  307  in  the  National 
lallery),  see  Vol.  XIX.  p.  250,  and  Vol.  XXII.  p.  379.  "Love  unbinding  the 
ione  of  Beauty"  is  otherwise  known  as  "The  Snake  in  the  Grass"  (No.  885  in 
he  National  Gallery).] 

[Reference  Series,  No.  117  (Vol.  XXI.  p.  88).] 


378 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


the  Loggie,  and  the  Stanze,  and  the  schools,  and  the  Dis 
putas,  and  the  Incendios,  and  the  Battaghas,  and  bust 
of  this  god,  and  torsos  of  that,  and  the  chatter  of  th 
studio,  and  the  rush  of  the  corso ; — and  has  laid  himsel 
down,  with  his  own  poor  eyes  and  heart,  and  the  sui 
casting  its  light  between  ruins, — possessor,  he,  of  so  mucl 
of  the  evidently  blessed  peace  of  things, — he,  and  the  poo 
lizard  in  the  cranny  of  the  stones  beside  him. 

166.  I  believe  that  with  the  name  of  Richard  Wilson, 
the  history  of  sincere  landscape  art,  founded  on  a  meditative 
love  of  Nature,  begins  for  England  :  and,  I  may  add,  foij 
Europe,  without  any  wide  extension  of  claim  ;  for  the  onlV 
continental  landscape  w^ork  of  any  sterling  merit  with  whicl 
I  am  acquainted,  consists  in  the  old-fashioned  drawings,  madt 
fifty  years  ago  to  meet  the  demand  of  the  first  influx  o 
British  travellers  into  Switzerland  after  the  fall  of  Napoleon.| 

With  Richard  Wilson,  at  all  events,  our  own  true  anci 
modest  schools  began,  an  especial  direction  being  presentl} 
given  to  them  in  the  rendering  effects  of  aerial  perspective 
by  the  skill  in  water-colour  of  Girtin  and  Cozens.  The 
drawings  of  these  two  masters,  recently  bequeathed  to  the 
British  Museum,^  and  I  hope  soon  to  be  placed  in  a  well- 
lighted  gallery,  contain  quite  insuperable  examples  of  skill 
in  the  management  of  clear  tints,  and  of  the  meditative 
charm  consisting  in  the  quiet  and  unaffected  treatment  of 
literally  true  scenes. 

But  the  impulse  to  which  the  new  school  owed  the 
discovery  of  its  power  in  colour  was  owing,  I  believe,  to 
the  poetry  of  Scott  and  Byron.  Both  by  their  vivid  passion 
and  accurate  description,  the  painters  of  their  day  were 
taught  the  true  value  of  natural  colour,  while  the  love  of 
mountains,  common  to  both  poets,  forced  their  illustrators 

^  [For  Wilson  (1714-1782),  as  one  of  the  "  teachers  of  Turner/'  see  Modern 
Painters,  vol.  iii.  (Vol.  V.  p.  408),  and  Notes  on  the  Turner  Gallery^  Vol.  XIII.  p.  102. 
For  Ruskin's  numerous  references  to  him,  Girtin,  and  Cozens,  see  the  General  Index.] 

2  [Examples  of  such  drawing^s  were  placed  by  Iluskin  in  his  drawing  school  at 
Oxford:  see  Vol.  XXL  pp.  129,  133.] 

2  [The  reference  is  to  several  drawings  by  each  of  these  artists  bequeathed  by 
Mr.  John  Henderson  in  1878:  see  the  Catalogue  of  Drawings  by  English  Artists,  by 
Laurence  Binyon,  vols.  i.  and  ii.  (issued  by  the  Trustees).] 


\ 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE 


379 


into  reverent  pilgrimage  to  scenes  which  till  then  had  been 
thought  too  desolate  for  the  spectators  interest,  or  too 
difficult  for  the  painter's  skill. 

.  167.  I  have  endeavoured,  in  the  92nd  number  of  Fors 
Clavigera,^  to  give  some  analysis  of  the  main  character  of 
the  scenery  by  which  Scott  was  inspired ;  but,  in  endeavour- 
ing to  mark  with  distinctness  enough  the  dependence  of  all 
its  sentiment  on  the  beauty  of  its  rivers,  I  have  not  enough 
•referred  to  the  collateral  charm,  in  a  borderer's  mind,  of 
I  the  very  mists  and  rain  that  feed  them.    In  the  climates 
of  Greece  and  Italy,  the  monotonous  sunshine,  burning 
away  the  deep  colours  of  everything  into  white  and  grey, 
and  wasting  the   strongest  mountain- streams  into  threads 
among  their  shingle,  alternates  with  the  blue-fiery  thunder- 
cloud, with  sheets  of  flooding  rain,  and  volleying  musquetry 
of  hail.    But  throughout  all  the  wild  uplands  of  the  former 
Saxon  kingdom   of  Northumbria,  from  Edwin's  crag  to 
Hilda's  cliff,  the  wreaths  of  softly  resting  mist,  and  wander- 
iing  to  and  fro  of  capricious  shadows  of  clouds,  and  droop- 
ing swathes,  or  flying  fringes,  of  the  benignant  western  rain, 
cherish,  on  every  moorland  summit,  the  deep-fibred  moss, — 
embalm  the  myrtle, — gild  the  asphodel, — enchant  along  the 
valleys  the  wild  grace  of  their  woods,  and  the  green  elf  land  of 
j  their  meadows  ;  and  passing  away,  or  melting  into  the  trans- 
I  lucent  calm  of  mountain  air,  leave  to  the  open  sunshine  a 
world  with  every  creature  ready  to  rejoice  in  its  comfort,  and 
every  rock  and  flower  reflecting  new  loveliness  to  its  light. 
I      168.  Perhaps  among  the  confusedly  miscellaneous  ex- 
jamples  of  ancient  and  modern,  tropic  or  arctic  art,  with 
!  which  I  have  filled  the  niches  of  your  schools,  one,  hitherto 
;of  the  least  noticeable  or  serviceable  to  you,  has  been  the 
dark  Copley  Fielding  drawing  above  the  fireplace;^ — nor 

1  [See  Vol.  XXIX.  pp.  460-463.] 

2  [of  a  view  Between  King's  House  and  Inveroran,  Argyllshire  :  see  Vol.  XXI. 
p.  171,  and  Prceterita,  i.  §  238.    The  drawing  was  sent  by  Ruskin  to  Christie's  in  1869, 

!  see  Vol.  XIII.  p.  572,  where  it  is  marked  as  sold  ;  but  it  was  bought  in  (see  Red  ford's 
Art  Sales,  vol.  ii.  p.  149),  and  was  placed  by  Ruskin  at  Oxford  for  several  years 
subsequently.  He  afterwards  removed  it,  but  not  (as  stated  in  Vol.  XXI.  p.  171  n.) 
to  Brantwood.] 

1 


380  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


am  I  afraid  of  trusting  your  kindness  with  the  confession, 
that  it  is  placed  there  more  in  memory  of  my  old  master, 
than  in  the  hope  of  its  proving  of  any  lively  interest  or' 
use  to  you.  But  it  is  now  some  fifty  years  since  it  was 
brought  in  triumph  to  Heme  Hill,  being  the  first  picture] 
my  father  ever  bought,  and  in  so  far  the  foundation  of  the 
subsequent  collection,  some  part  of  which  has  been  per- 
mitted to  become  permanently  national  at  Cambridge  and 
Oxford.  The  pleasure  which  that  single  drawing  gave  on 
the  morning  of  its  installation  in  our  home  was  greater 
than  to  the  purchaser  accustomed  to  these  times  of  limit- 
less demand  and  supply  would  be  credible,  or  even  con- 
ceivable ; — and  our  back  parlour  for  that  day  was  as  full  of 
surprise  and  gratulation  as  ever  Cimabue's  joyful  Borgo.^ 

The  drawing  represents,  as  you  will  probably — not — 
remember,  only  a  gleam  of  sunshine  on  a  peaty  moor, 
bringing  out  the  tartan  plaids  of  two  Highland  drovers,  and 
relieved  against  the  dark  grey  of  a  range  of  quite  feature- 
less and  nameless  distant  mountains,  seen  through  a  soft 
curtain  of  rapidly  drifting  rain. 

169.  Some  little  time  after  we  had  acquired  this  unob- 
trusive treasure,  one  of  my  fellow  students, — it  was  in  my 
undergraduate  days  at  Christ  Church — came  to  Herne  Hill 
to  see  what  the  picture  might  be  which  had  afforded  me 
so  great  ravishment.  He  had  himself,  as  afterwards  King- 
lake  and  Curzon,^  been  urged  far  by  the  thirst  of  oriental 
travel; — the  chequer  of  plaid  and  bonnet  had  for  him  but 
feeble  interest  after  having  worn  turban  and  capote;  and 
the  grey  of  Scottish  hill-side  still  less,  to  one  who  had 
climbed  Olympus  and  Abarim.  After  gazing  blankly  for  a 
minute  or  two  at  the  cheerless  district  through  which  lay  the 
drovers'  journey,  he  turned  to  me  and  said,  "  But,  Buskin, 
what  is  the  use  of  painting  such  very  bad  weather  ? "  ^  And 

1  [See  Vol.  III.  p.  644  w.] 

2  [For  references  to  Kinglake's  Eothen,  see  Vol.  VL  p.  269,  Vol.  XV.  p.  442, 
and  Vol.  XIX.  p.  108  ;  for  Curzon's  Monasteries  of  the  Levant,  Vol.  IX.  p.  35.] 

^  [Compare  Modern  Painters^  vol.  iv.  (Vol.  VI.  p.  88),  where  Ruskiu  had  already 
given  this  remark.] 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE 


381 


[  had  no  answer,  except  that,  for  Copley  Fielding  and  for 
ne,  there  was  no  such  thing  as  bad  weather,  but  only 
iifFerent  kinds  of  pleasant  weather — some  indeed  inferring 
:he  exercise  of  a  little  courage  and  patience;  but  all,  in 
3very  hour  of  it,  exactly  what  was  fittest  and  best,  whether 
•or  the  hills,  the  cattle,  the  drovers — or  my  master  and  me. 

170.  Be  the  case  as  it  might, — and  admitting  that  in  a 
certain  sense  the  weather  might  be  bad  in  the  eyes  of  a 
Sreek  or  a  Saracen, — there  was  no  question  that  to  us  it 
»vas  not  only  pleasant,  but  picturesque;  and  that  we  set 
ourselves  to  the  painting  of  it,  with  as  sincere  desire  to  re- 
Dresent  the — to  our  minds — beautiful  aspect  of  a  mountain 
jhower,  as  ever  Titian  a  blue  sky,  or  Angelico  a  golden 
;phere  of  Paradise.  Nay,  in  some  sort,  with  a  more  per- 
fect delight  in  the  thing  itself,  and  less  colouring  of  it  by 
)ur  own  thoughts  or  inventions.  For  that  matter,  neither 
Yielding,  nor  Kobson,  nor  David  Cox,  nor  Peter  de  Wint, 
lor  any  of  this  school,  ever  had  much  thought  or  inven- 
:ion  to  disturb  them.  They  were,  themselves,  a  kind  of 
contemplative  cattle,  and  flock  of  the  field,  who  merely 
iked  being  out  of  doors,  and  brought  as  much  painted 
Tesh  air  as  they  could,  back  into  the  house  with  them. 

171.  Neither  must  you  think  that  this  painting  of  fresh 
iir  is  an  entirely  easy  or  soon  managed  business.  You 
nay  paint  a  modern  French  emotional  landscape  with  a 
Dail  of  whitewash  and  a  pot  of  gas-tar  in  ten  minutes,  at 
:he  outside.  I  don't  know  how  long  the  operator  himself 
takes  to  it — of  course  some  little  more  time  must  be  occu- 
pied in  plastering  on  the  oil-paint  so  that  it  will  stick,  and 
Qot  run;  but  the  skill  of  a  good  plasterer  is  really  all  that 
is  required, — the  rather  that  in  the  modern  idea  of  solemn 
symmetry  you  always  make  the  bottom  of  your  picture,  as 
much  as  you  can,  like  the  top.  You  put  seven  or  eight 
streaks  of  the  plaster  for  your  sky,  to  begin  with ;  then 
you  put  in  a  row  of  bushes  with  the  gas-tar,  then  you  rub 
the  ends  of  them  into  the  same  shapes  upside  down — you 
put  three  or  four  more  streaks  of  white,  to  intimate  the 


382 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


presence  of  a  pool  of  water — and  if  you  finish  off  with  a 
log  that  looks  something  like  a  dead  body,  your  picture 
will  have  the  credit  of  being  a  digest  of  a  whole  novel  of 
Gaboriau,^  and  lead  the  talk  of  the  season. 

172.  Far  other  was  the  kind  of  labour  required  of  even 
the  least  disciple  of  the  old  English  water-colour  school.  ' 
In  the  first  place,  the  skill  of  laying  a  perfectly  even 
and  smooth  tint  with  absolute  precision  of  complex  outhne 
was  attained  to  a  degree  which  no  amateur  draughtsman 
can  have  the  least  conception  of.  Water-colour,  under  the 
ordinary  sketcher's  mismanagement,  drops  and  dries  pretty 
nearly  to  its  own  fancy, — slops  over  every  outline,  clots  in 
every  shade,  seams  itself  with  undesirable  edges,  speckles 
itself  with  inexplicable  grit,  and  is  never  supposed  capable 
of  representing  anything  it  is  meant  for,  till  most  of  it  has 
been  washed  out.  But  the  great  primary  masters  of  the 
trade  could  lay,  with  unerring  precision  of  tone  and  equality 
of  depth,  the  absolute  tint  they  wanted  without  a  fiaw  or 
a  retouch ;  and  there  is  perhaps  no  greater  marvel  of  artistic  i 
practice  and  finely  accurate  intention  existing,  in  a  simple 
kind,  greater  than  the  study  of  a  Yorkshire  waterfall,  by 
Girtin,  now  in  the  British  Museum,^  in  which  every  sparkle, 
ripple,  and  current  is  left  in  frank  light  by  the  steady  pencil 
which  is  at  the  same  instant,  and  with  the  same  touch, 
drawing  the  forms  of  the  dark  congeries  of  channelled  rocks, 
while  around  them  it  disperses  the  glitter  of  their  spray. 

173.  Then  further,  on  such  basis  of  well-laid  primary 
tint,  the  old  water-colour  men  were  wont  to  obtain  their  f 
effects  of  atmosphere  by  the  most  delicate  washes  of  trans- 
parent colour,  reaching  subtleties  of  gradation  in  misty 
light,  which  were  wholly  unthought  of  before  their  time. 
In  this  kind  the  depth  of  far-distant  brightness,  freshness, 
and  mystery  of  morning  air  with  which  Copley  Fielding 
used  to  invest  the  ridges  of  the  South  Downs,  as  they  rose 

^  [For  other  references  to  Gaboriau,  see  Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  118.] 

2  [Not  of  a  Yorkshire,  but  of  a  Welsh,  waterfall ;  if,  as  seems  to  be  the  case, 

Riiskin  refers  to  the  lar^e  drawing  (^^  Cayne  Waterfall")  which  is  No.  55  in  the 

Catalogue  of  Drawings,  vol.  ii.] 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE 


383 


ut  of  the  blue  Sussex  champaign,  remains,  and  I  believe 
lUst  remain,  insuperable,  while  his  sense  of  beauty  in  the 
loud-forms  associated  with  higher  mountains,  enabled  him 
d  invest  the  comparatively  modest  scenery  of  our  own 
iland, — out  of  which  he  never  travelled, — with  a  charm 
ddom  attained  by  the  most  ambitious  painters  of  Alp  or 
Lpennine. 

174.  I  vainly  tried  in  writing  the  last  volume  of  Modern 
^ainters^  to  explain,  even  to  myself,  the  cause  or  nature 
f  the  pure  love  of  mountains  which  in  boyhood  was  the 
iihng  passion  of  my  life,  and  which  is  demonstrably  the 
rst  motive  of  inspiration  with  Scott,  Wordsworth,  and 
Ijrron.  The  more  I  analyzed,  the  less  I  could  either  under- 
tand,  or  justify,  the  mysterious  pleasure  we  all  of  us,  great 
r  small,  had  in  the  land's  being  up  and  down  instead 
f  level;  and  the  less  I  felt  able  to  deny  the  claim  of 
rosaic  and  ignobly-minded^  persons  to  be  allowed  to  like  it 
ivel,  instead  of  up  and  down.  In  the  end  I  found  there 
^as  nothing  for  it  but  simply  to  assure  those  recusant  and 
rovelling  persons  that  they  were  perfectly  wrong,  and  that 
othing  could  be  expected,  either  in  art  or  literature,  from 
eople  who  liked  to  live  among  snipes  and  widgeons. 

175.  Assuming  it,  therefore,  for  a  moral  axiom  that  the 
we  of  mountains  was  a  heavenly  gift,  and  the  beginning 
f  wisdom,  it  may  be  imagined,  if  we  endured  for  their 
ikes  any  number  of  rainy  days  with  philosophy,  with  what 
xpture  the  old  painters  were  wont  to  hail  the  reappearance 
f  their  idols,  with  all  their  cataracts  refreshed,  and  all  their 
opse  and  crags  respangled,  flaming  in  the  forehead  of  the 
lorning  sky.  Very  certainly  and  seriously  there  are  no 
Lich  emotions  to  be  had  out  of  the  hedged  field  or  ditched 
3n ;  and  I  have  often  charitably  paused  in  my  insistences  in 
'^ors  Clavigera  ^  that  our  squires  should  live  from  year's  end 
0  year's  end  on  their  own  estates,  when  I  reflected  how 
nany  of  their  acres  lay  in  Leicestershire  and  Lincolnshire 

1  [Really  the  last  chapter  of  the  fourth  volume  :  see  Vol.  VI.  pp.  418  seq.] 

2  [See,  for  instance.  Letters  9  and  10  (Vol.  XXVII.  pp.  161,  176).] 


384 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


or  even  on  duller  levels,  where  there  was  neither  goo 
hunting  nor  duck-shooting. 

176.  I  am  only  able  to  show  you  two  drawings  h 
illustration  of  these  sentiments  of  the  mountain  school,  an. 
one  of  those  is  only  a  copy  of  a  Robson,^  but  one  quit 
good  enough  to  represent  his  manner  of  work  and  tone  o' 
feeling.  He  died  young,^  and  there  may  perhaps  be  som 
Hkeness  to  the  gentle  depth  of  sadness  in  Keats,  trace 
able  in  his  refusal  to  paint  any  of  the  leaping  streams  Oj 
bright  kindling  heaths  of  Scotland,  while  he  dwells  with  ;l 
monotony  of  affection  on  the  clear  repose  of  the  northeri 
twilight,  and  on  the  gathering  of  the  shadow  in  the  moun 
tain  gorges,  till  all  their  forms  were  folded  in  one  kingl^ 
shroud  of  purple  death.  But  over  these  hours  and  colour 
of  the  scene  his  governance  was  all  but  complete ;  and  evei 
in  this  unimportant  and  imperfectly  rendered  example,  th< 
warmth  of  the  departing  sunlight,  and  the  depth  of  sof 
air  in  the  recesses  of  the  glen,  are  given  with  harmon) 
more  true  and  more  pathetic  than  you  will  find  in  anj 
recent  work  of  even  the  most  accomplished  masters. 

177.  But  of  the  loving  labour,  and  severely  disciplinec 
observation,  which  prepared  him  for  the  expression  of  thi; 
feeling  for  chiaroscuro,  you  can  only  judge  by  examining 
at  leisure  his  outlines  of  Scottish  scenery,  a  work  of  whos( 
existence  I  had  no  knowledge,  until  the  kindness  of  Mrs 
Inge^  advised  me  of  it,  and  further,  procured  for  me  the 
loan  of  the  copy  of  it  laid  on  the  table ;  which  you  wil 
find  has  marks  placed  in  it  at  the  views  of  Byron's  Lachin| 
y-Gair,  of  Scott's  Ben  Venue,  and  of  all  Scotsmen's  Bar 
Lomond, — plates  which  you  may  take  for  leading  types  o1 
the  most  careful  delineation  ever  given  to  mountain  scenery 
for  the  love  of  it,  pure  and  simple.'^ 

1  [The  copy  was  not  left  at  Oxford.] 

2  [At  the  age  of  forty-five  (1788-1833).] 

^  [Wife  of  the  then  Provost  of  Worcester  College.] 

*  [Scenery  of  the  Grampian  Mountains ;  illu-strated  by  Forty  Etchings  in  the  Soji 
Ground  .  .  .  by  George  Fennell  Rohson,  1814.  Ben  Lomond  is  Nos.  2-4  ;  Ben  Venue. 
Nos.  8-10;  and  Lachin-y-gair,  Nos.  31,  32.  For  Byron's  Lachin-v-Gair,"  coni- 
pare  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  §  61  (Vol.  XXXIV.  p.  831).] 


I 


VL  THE  HILL-SIDE 


385 


178.  The  last  subject  has  a  very  special  interest  to  me  ; 
id— if  you  knew  all  I  could  tell  you,  did  time  serve,  of 
le  associations  connected  with  it— would  be  seen  gratefully 
Y  you  also.    In  the  text  descriptive  of  it,  (and  the  text 
[  this  book  is  quite  exceptionally  sensible  and  useful,  for 
work  of  the  sort,)  Mr.  Robson  acknowledges  his  obliga- 
on  for  the  knowledge  of  this  rarely  discovered  view  of 
en  Lomond,^  to  Sir  Thomas  Acland,  the  father  of  our 
NYL  Dr.  Henry  Acland,  the  strength  of  whose  whole  Hfe 
therto  has  been  passed  in  the  eager  and  unselfish  service 
I'  the  University  of  Oxford.    His  father  was,  of  all  amateur 
tists  I  ever  knew,  the  best  draughtsman  of  mountains, 
)t  with  spasmodic  force,  or  lightly  indicated  feeling,  but 
ith  firm,   exhaustive,  and   unerring  delineation  of  their 
lystalline  and  geologic  form.    From  him  the  faith  in  the 
)auty  and  truth  of  natural  science  in  connection  with  art 
as  learned  happily  by  his  physician-son,  by  whom,  almost 
iiaided,  the  first  battles  were  fought — and  fought  hard— 
jfore  any  of  you  eager  young  physicists  were  born,  in  the 
1en  despised  causes  of  natural  science  and  industrial  art. 
'iiat  cause  was  in  the  end  sure  of  victory,  but  here  in 
<Kford  its  triumph  would  have  been  long  deferred,  had  it 
]  t  been  for  the  energy  and  steady  devotion  of  Dr.  Acland. 

'ithout  him — little  as  you  may  think  it — the  great  galleries 
{ d  laboratories  of  this  building,^  in  which  you  pursue  your 
]  ysical  science  studies  so  advantageously,  and  so  forgetfully 
(  their  first  advocate,  would  not  yet  have  been  in  exist- 
tce.  Nor,  after  their  erection,  (if  indeed  in  this  there  be 
ly  cause  for  your  thanks,)  would  an  expositor  of  the  laws 
(  landscape  beauty  have  had  the  privilege  of  addressing 
3u  under  their  roof.^ 

179.  I  am  indebted  also  to  one  of  my  Oxford  friends, 
Ijiss  Symonds,  for  the  privilege  of  showing  you,  with  entire 
s:isfaction,  a  perfectly  good  and  characteristic  drawing  by 

^      Ben  Lomond  from  the  West,"  Plate  IV.] 
'  [The  Oxford  Museum:  see  Vol.  XVI.] 

^  [Ruskin  refers  to  the  fact  that  Acland  was  one  of  the  electors  who  appointed 
hi  to  the  professorship:  see  Vol.  XX.  p.  xix.] 

XXXIII.  2  B 


386  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


Copley  Fielding,  of  Cader  Idris,  seen  down  the  vale  o 
Dolgelly;  in  which  he  has  expressed  with  his  utmost  skil, 
the  joy  of  his  heart  in  the  aerial  mountain  light,  and  tb, 
iridescent  wildness  of  the  mountain  foreground;  nor  couL^ 
you  see  enforced  with  any  sweeter  emphasis  the  truth  oi 
which  Mr.  Morris  dwelt  so  earnestly  in  his  recent  addres; 
to  you  ^ — that  the  excellence  of  the  work  is,  cceteris  paribus, 
in  proportion  to  the  joy  of  the  workman.^ 

180.  There  is  a  singular  character  in  the  colouring  oj 
Fielding,  as  he  uses  it  to  express  the  richness  of  beautify 
vegetation ;  he  makes  the  sprays  of  it  look  partly  as  if  the^ 
were  strewn  with  jewels.  He  is  of  course  not  absolute!^ 
right  in  this ;  to  some  extent  it  is  a  conventional  exagger^ 
tion — and  yet  it  has  a  basis  of  truth  which  excuses,  if  ii 
does  not  justify,  this  expression  of  his  pleasure ;  for  n» 
colour  can  possibly  represent  vividly  enough  the  charm  o 
radiance  which  you  can  see  by  looking  closely  at  dewl 
sprinkled  leaves  and  flowers.  i 

181.  You  must  ask  Professor  Clifton*  to  explain  to  yoil 
why  it  is  that  a  drop  of  water,  while  it  subdues  the  hu|  ^ 
of  a  green  leaf  or  blue  flower  into  a  soft  grey,  and  show 
itself  therefore  on  the  grass  or  the  dock-leaf  as  a  lustrou 
dimness,  enhances  the  force  of  all  warm  colours,  so  thai  ? 
you  never  can  see  what  the  colour  of  a  carnation  or 
wild  rose  really  is  till  you  get  the  dew  on  it.    The  efFeCj 
is,  of  course,  only  generalized  at  the  distance  of  a  paintablf  1 
foreground  ;  but  it  is  always  in  reality  part  of  the  emotioil  ^ 
of  the  scene,  and  justifiably  sought  in  any  possible  similitude  J 
by  the  means  at  our  disposal. 

182.  It  is  with  still  greater  interest  and  reverence  t<j  i 
be  noted  as  a  physical  truth  that  in  states  of  joyful  ano  ^ 
healthy  excitement  the  eye  becomes  more  highly  sensitive  | 
to  the  beauty  of  colour,^  and  especially  to  the  blue  and  re(  i 

^  [See  below,  §  187  (p.  390).]  \ 
2  [The  report  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  (November  19)  has  :  "other  things  bein|  | 
granted,  for  very  foolish  persons  often  take  the  utmost  delight  in  their  work."] 
[Compare  A  Joy  for  Ever,  §  102  (Vol.  XVI.  p.  87).] 
*  [Then,  as  now  (1907),  Professor  of  Experimental  Philosophy  at  Oxford.] 
^  [Compare  Eagles  Nest,  §  113  (Vol.  XXII.  p.  202).] 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE 


387 


lys,  while  in  depression  and  disease  all  colour  becomes  dim 
)  us,  and  the  yellow  rays  prevail  over  the  rest,  even  to 
le  extremity  of  jaundice.  But  while  I  direct  your  atten- 
on  to  these  deeply  interesting  conditions  of  sight,  common 
)  the  young  and  old,  I  must  warn  you  of  the  total  and 
lost  mischievous  fallacy  of  the  statements  put  forward  a 
iw  years  ago  by  a  foreign  oculist,  respecting  the  changes 
f  sight  in  old  age.^  I  neither  know,  nor  care,  what  states 
f  senile  disease  exist  when  the  organ  has  been  misused  or 
isused  ;  but  in  all  cases  of  disciplined  and  healthy  sight, 
le  sense  of  colour  and  form  is  absolutely  one  and  the 
ime  from  childhood  to  death. 

183.  When  I  was  a  boy  of  twelve  years  old,  I  saw 
ature  with  Turner's  eyes,  he  being  then  sixty;  and  I 
lould  never  have  asked  permission  to  resume  the  guidance 
f  your  schools,  unless  now,  at  sixty-four,  I  saw  the  same 
ues  in  heaven  and  earth  as  when  I  walked  a  child  by  my 
lother's  side. 

Neither  may  you  suppose  that  between  Turner  s  eyes, 
nd  yours,  there  is  any  difference  respecting  which  it  may 
e  disputed  whether  of  the  two  is  right.  The  sight  of  a 
reat  painter  is  as  authoritative  as  the  lens  of  a  camera 
ucida;  he  perceives  the  form  which  a  photograph  will 
itify;  he  is  sensitive  to  the  violet  or  to  the  golden  ray  to 
le  last  precision  and  gradation  of  the  chemist's  defining 
ght  and  intervaled  line.  But  the  veracity,  as  the  joy,  of 
jiis  sensation, — and  the  one  involves  the  other, — are  depen- 
|ent,  as  I  have  said,  first  on  vigour  of  health,  and  secondly 
1  the  steady  looking  for  and  acceptance  of  the  truth  of 
ature  as  she  gives  it  you,  and  not  as  you  like  to  have  it 
-to  inflate  your  own  pride,  or  satisfy  your  own  passion. 
I  pursued  in  that  insolence,  or  in  that  concupiscence,  the 
benomena  of  all  the  universe  become  first  gloomy,  and 
jien  spectral;  the  sunset  becomes  demoniac  fire  to  you, 
lid  the  clouds  of  heaven  as  the  smoke  of  Acheron. 

!  ^  [For  the  reference  here  to  Dr.  Liebreich,  see  Ruskin's  letter  of  March  15, 
72,  in  Vol.  X.  p.  458  ;  and  compare  Vol.  XV.  p.  357  n.] 


388 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


184.  If  there  is  one  part  more  than  another  which  ir 
my  early  writing  deservedly  obtained  audience  and  accept 
ance,  it  was  that  in  which  I  endeavoured  to  direct  th 
thoughts  of  my  readers  to  the  colours  of  the  sky,  and  t 
the  forms  of  its  clouds.  But  it  has  been  my  fate  to  liv 
and  work  in  direct  antagonism  to  the  instincts,  and  ye 
more  to  the  interests,  of  the  age ;  since  I  wrote  that  chap 
ter  ^  on  the  pure  traceries  of  the  vault  of  morning,  the  fur 
of  useless  traffic  has  shut  the  sight,  whether  of  morning 
or  evening,  from  more  than  the  third  part  of  England 
and  the  foulness  of  sensual  fantasy  has  infected  the  brigh 
beneficence  of  the  life-giving  sky  with  the  dull  horrors  o 
disease,  and  the  feeble  falsehoods  of  insanity.  In  the  boo^ 
professing  to  initiate  a  child  in  the  elements  of  natura 
science,  of  which  I  showed  you  the  average  character  c 
illustration  at  my  last  lecture,^  there  is  one  chapter  especiall; 
given  to  aerial  phenomena — wherein  the  cumulus  cloud  i| 
asserted  to  occur  "  either  under  the  form  of  a  globe  or  ;] 
half  globe,"  and  in  such  shape  to  present  the  most  exeit 
ing  field  for  the  action  of  imagination.  AVhat  the  Franc) 
artistic  imagination  is  supposed  to  produce,  under  the  in 
fluence  of  this  excitement,  we  find  represented  by  a  wood 
cut,  of  which  Mr.  Macdonald  has  reproduced  for  you  th 
most  sublime  portion.^  May  I,  for  a  minute  or  two,  delay 
and  prepare  you  for,  its  enjoyment  by  reading  the  lines  ii 
which  Wordsworth  describes  the  impression  made  on  a  cul 
tivated  and  pure-hearted  spectator,  by  the  sudden  opening 
of  the  sky  after  storm  ? —  j 

"A  single  step,  that  freed  me  from  the  skirts 
Of  the  blind  vapour,  opened  to  my  view 
Glory  beyond  all  glory  ever  seen 
By  waking  sense  or  by  the  dreaming  soul ! 
 The  appearance,  instantaneously  disclosed,   ^ 

^  [Part  ii.  sec.  iii.  ch.  i.  (^^The  Open  Sky")  in  vol.  i.  of  Modem  Painter 
(Vol.  III.  pp.  343  seg.).  See  also  Vol.  VII.  p.  179  (quoted  in  Vol.  XXXIV 
p.  44).] 

2  [Above,  §  132  (p.  354).  The  reference  here  is  to  p.  17  of  Les  Pourqm 
de  Mademoiselle  Suzanne.] 

^  [The  example  remains  in  the  Ruskin  Drawing  School.  The  woodcut  is  O] 
p.  18  of  Les  Pourquoi.'] 


VL  THE  HILL-SIDE 


389 


Was  of  a  mighty  city — boldly  say 
A  wilderness  of  building,  sinking  far 
And  self- withdrawn  into  a  boundless  depth. 
Far-sinking  into  splendour — without  end  ! 
Fabric  it  seemed  of  diamond  and  of  gold. 
With  alabaster  domes,  and  silver  spires. 
And  blazing  terrace  upon  terrace,  high 
Uplifted;  here,  serene  pavilions  bright, 
In  avenues  disposed;  there,  towers  begirt 
With  battlements  that  on  their  restless  fronts 
Bore  stars — illumination  of  all  gems ! 
By  earthly  nature  had  the  effect  been  wrought 
Upon  the  dark  materials  of  the  storm 
Now  pacified ;  on  them,  and  on  the  coves 
And  mountain-steeps  and  summits,  whereunto 
The  vapours  had  receded,  taking  there 
Their  station  under  a  cerulean  sky."  ^ 

185.  I  do  not  mean  wholly  to  ratify  this  Words worthian 
atement  of  Arcana  Coelestia,  since,  as  far  as  I  know 
jDuds  myself,  they  look  always  like  clouds,  and  are  no 
lore  walled  like  castles  than  backed  like  weasels.^  And 
jrther,  observe  that  no  great  poet  ever  tells  you  that  he 
ilw  something  finer  than  anybody  ever  saw  before.  Great 
]|)ets  try  to  describe  what  all  men  see,  and  to  express 
hat  all  men  feel;  if  they  cannot  describe  it,  they  let  it 
;one;  and  what  they  say,  say  boldly"  always,  without 
J '  vising  their  readers  of  that  fact. 

186.  Nevertheless,  though  extremely  feeble  poetry,  this 
jece  of  bold  Wordsworth  is  at  least  a  sincere  effort  to 
^  scribe  what  was  in  truth  to  the  writer  a  most  rapturous 
'sion, — with  which  we  may  now  compare  to  our  edification 
l!e  sort  of  object  which  the  same  sort  of  cloud  suggests 
1|  the  modern  French  imagination.^ 

!  ^  [The  Excursion,  Book  ii.  (towards  the  end).] 

i  ^  [See  Hamlet,  Act  iii.  sc.  2 :  compare  The  Storm-Cloud,  §  14  (Vol.  XXXIV. 

]  19).] 
^  [The  report  has  ; — 

.  .  .  rapturous  vision.  And  now  see  what  the  modern  French  imagina- 
tion makes  of  it"— and  Mr.  Macdonald's  sketch  disclosed  the  clouds 
grouped  into  the  face  of  a  mocking  and  angry  fiend.  Mr.  Macdonald 
modestly  proceeded  to  turn  his  sketch  to  the  wall,  but  Mr.  Ruskin  inter- 
posed :  "  Keep  it  there,  and  it  shall  permanently  remain,  too,  in  your 
school,  as  a  type  of  the  loathsome  and  lying  spirit  of  defamation  which 
studies  men  only  in  the  skeleton  and  nature  in  ashes." 

idl  Mall  Gazette,  November  19.)] 


390 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


It  would  be  surely  superfluous  to  tell  you  that  th 
representation  of  cloud  is  as  false  as  it  is  monstrous;  bi 
the  point  which  I  wish  principally  to  enforce  on  yoi 
attention  is  that  all  this  loathsome  and  lying  defacemer 
of  book  pages,  which  looks  as  if  it  w^ould  end  in  represem 
ing  humanity  only  in  its  skeleton,  and  nature  only  in 
ashes,  is  all  of  it  founded  first  on  the  desire  to  make  th 
volume  saleable  at  small  cost,  and  attractive  to  the  greater 
number,  on  whatever  terms  of  attraction.  | 

187.  The  significant  change  which  Mr.  Morris  made  il 
the  title  of  his  recent  lecture,  from  Art  and  Democracy,  t 
Art  and  Plutocracy,  strikes  at  the  root  of  the  whole  matter 
and  with  wider  sweep  of  blow  than  he  permitted  himself  tj 
give  his  words.  The  changes  which  he  so  deeply  deploref 
and  so  grandly  resented,  in  this  once  loveliest  city,  are  du 
wholly  to  the  deadly  fact  that  her  power  is  now  dependei 
on  the  Plutocracy  of  Knowledge,  instead  of  its  Divinitjj 
There  are  indeed  many  splendid  conditions  in  the  new  iir 
pulses  with  which  we  are  agitated, — or  it  may  be  inspired,| 

^  [Compare  §  179  (above,  p.  386).  The  lecture  was  given  in  connexion  wit 
the  Russell  Club  in  the  hall  of  University  College,  Oxford,  and  was  briefly  reportt 
in  the  Times,  and  more  fully  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  of  November  15,  1883. 
excited  much  notice  and  some  anger  (see  a  letter  in  the  Times  of  November  19 
as  Morris  avowed  his  Socialist  opinions  (compare  J.  W.  MackaiFs  Life  of  Morri 
vol.  ii.  pp.  117-120).  The  lecture  covered  much  the  same  ground  as  that  of  tl 
one  published  two  months  later — Art  and  Socialism :  a  Lecture  delivered  {January  2 
1884)  before  the  Secular  Society  of  Leicester,  by  William  Morris,  1884.  It  appeal 
from  the  report  that  Morris  explained  at  the  outset  of  his  lecture  that  its  tn 
subject  was  art  under  a  plutocracy."  Some  of  the  College  and  University  auth( 
rities,  who  were  present  at  the  lecture,  rose  at  its  conclusion  to  dissociate  themselv( 
from  the  lecturer's  political  views.  Ruskin  followed  in  an  impromptu  and  uureporte 
speech,  chaffing  these  grave  and  reverend  siguiors  freely,  and  ending  up,  by  som 
transition  of  thought  no  longer  recoverable,  with  a  description  of  a  sunset.  "M; 
Ruskin,"  says  the  report  in  the  Pall  Mall,  ''whose  appearance  was  the  signal  fo 
immense  enthusiasm,  speaking  of  the  lecturer  as  '^the  great  couceiver  and  doei 
the  man  at  once  a  poet,  an  artist,  and  a  workman,  and  his  old  and  dear  friend 
said  that  he  agreed  with  him  in  'imploring  the  young  men  who  were  bein 
educated  here  to  seek  in  true  unity  and  love  one  for  another  the  best  direction  fo 
the  great  forces  which,  like  an  evil  aurora,  were  lighting  the  world,  and  thus  t 
bring  about  the  peace  which  passeth  all  understanding.' "  Morris  in  the  cours 
of  his  lecture  had  said  "  Oxford  itself,  which  should  have  been  left  as  a  preciou 
jewel  by  us,  the  trustees  of  prosperity,  has  been  treated  as  a  stone  in  the  highway 
wherever  a  tree  falls,  a  worse  is  planted  in  its  place."  Referring  to  this  passage 
Ruskin  said  in  the  present  lecture  (compare  §  188):  "The  defilement  of  our  ow) 
Oxford,  which  Mr.  Morris  so  grandly  described  to  you  and  so  bitterly  resented,  ha 
been  mostly  due  to  the  plutocracy  of  learning"  {Pall  Mall  Gazette,  November  19). 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE 


391 


jnt  against  one  of  them,  I  must  warn  you,  in  all  affection 
md  in  all  duty. 

188.  So  far  as  you  come  to  Oxford  in  order  to  get 
four  living  out  of  her,  you  are  ruining  both  Oxford  and 
^rourselves.  There  never  has  been,  there  never  can  be,  any 
3ther  law  respecting  the  wisdom  that  is  from  above,  than 
:his  one  precept, — "Buy  the  Truth,  and  sell  it  not."^  It 
s  to  be  costly  to  you — of  labour  and  patience;  and  you 
are  never  to  sell  it,  but  to  guard,  and  to  give. 

Much  of  the  enlargement,  though  none  of  the  deface- 
ment, of  old  Oxford  is  owing  to  the  real  life  and  the 
rionest  seeking  of  extended  knowledge.  But  more  is  owing 
to  the  supposed  money  value  of  that  knowledge;  and 
exactly  so  far  forth,  her  enlargement  is  purely  injurious  to 
:he  University  and  to  her  scholars. 

189.  In  the  department  of  her  teaching,  therefore,  which 
IS  entrusted  to  my  care,  I  wish  it  at  once  to  be  known 
that  I  will  entertain  no  question  of  the  saleability  of  this 
or  that  manner  of  art;  and  that  I  shall  steadily  discourage 
:he  attendance  of  students  who  propose  to  make  their  skill 
1  source  of  income.  Not  that  the  true  labourer  is  unworthy 
of  his  hire,  but  that,  above  all  in  the  beginning  and  first 
Ichoice  of  industry,  his  heart  must  not  be  the  heart  of  an 
hireling.^ 

You  may,  and  with  some  measure  of  truth,  ascribe  this 
determination  in  me  to  the  sense  of  my  own  weakness 
and  want  of  properly  so-called  artistic  gift.  That  is  indeed 
so:  there  are  hundreds  of  men  better  qualified  than  I  to 
Iteach  practical  technique:  and,  in  their  studios,  all  persons 
I  desiring  to  be  artists  should  place  themselves.  But  I  never 
would  have  come  to  Oxford,  either  before  or  now,  unless 
in  the  conviction  that  I  was  able  to  direct  her  students 
precisely  in  that  degree  and  method  of  application  to  art 
which  was  most  consistent  with  the  general  and  perpetual 
functions  of  the  University. 

^  [Proverbs  xxiii.  23.] 

2  [Lui^e  X.  7  ;  John  x.  13.  Compare  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  §§  32,  33  (Vol.  XVIII. 
pp.  412-414).] 


392  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


190.  Now,  therefore,  to  prevent  much  future  disappoint-^ 
ment  and  loss  of  time  both  to  you  and  to  myself,  let  mt- 
forewarn  you  that  I  will  not  assist  out  of  the  schools,  nor 
allow  in  them,  modes  of  practice  taken  up  at  each  student's* 
fancy.  ^ 

In  the  classes,  the  modes  of  study  will  be  entirely 
fixed;  and  at  your  homes  I  cannot  help  you,  unless  you 
work  in  accordance  with  the  class  rules, — ^which  rules, 
however,  if  you  do  follow,  you  will  soon  be  able  to  judge 
and  feel  for  yourselves,  whether  you  are  doing  right  andi 
getting  on,  or  otherwise.  This  I  tell  you  with  entire  con-| 
fidence,  because  the  illustrations  and  examples  of  the  modes 
of  practice  in  question,  which  I  have  been  showing  you 
in  the  course  of  these  lectures,  have  been  furnished  to 
me  by  young  people  like  yourselves ;  like,  in  all  things, 
except  only, — so  far  as  they  are  to  be  excepted  at  all, — in 
the  perfect  repose  of  mind,  which  has  been  founded  on  a 
simply  believed,  and  unconditionally  obeyed,  religion. 

191.  On  the  repose  of  mind,  I  say;  and  there  is  a 
singular  physical  truth  illustrative  of  that  spiritual  life  and 
peace  which  I  must  yet  detain  you  by  indicating  in  the 
subject  of  our  study  to-day.  You  see  how  this  foulness 
of  false  imagination  represents,  in  every  line,  the  clouds 
not  only  as  monstrous, — but  tumultuous.  Now  all  lovely 
clouds,  remember,  are  quiet  clouds,^ — not  merely  quiet  in 
appearance,  because  of  their  greater  height  and  distance, 
but  quiet  actually,  fixed  for  hours,  it  may  be,  in  the  same 
form  and  place.  I  have  seen  a  fair-weather  cloud  high 
over  Coniston  Old  Man, — not  ou  the  hill,  observe,  but  a 
vertical  mile  above  it, — stand  motionless, — changeless, — for 
twelve  hours  together.  From  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon 
of  one  day  I  watched  it  through  the  night  by  the  north 
twilight,  till  the  dawn  struck  it  with  full  crimson,  at  four 
of  the  following  July  morning.  What  is  glorious  and  good 
in  the  heavenly  cloud,  you  can,  if  you  will,  bring  also  into 


1  [Compare  The  Storm-Cloudy  §  5  (Vol.  XXXIV.  p.  11).] 


VI.  THE  HILL-SIDE 


393 


our  lives, — which  are  indeed  Hke  it,  in  their  vanishing, 
ut  how  much  more  in  their  not  vanishing,  till  the  morn- 
ig  take  them  to  itself.  As  this  ghastly  phantasy  of  death 
i  to  the  mighty  clouds  of  which  it  is  written,  "The 
harlots  of  God  are  twenty  thousand,  even  thousands  of 
ngels,"^  are  the  fates  to  which  your  passion  may  condemn 
ou, — or  your  resolution  raise.  You  may  drift  with  the 
hrenzy  of  the  whirlwind, — or  be  fastened  for  your  part  in 
be  pacified  effulgence  of  the  sky.  Will  you  not  let  your 
ves  be  lifted  up,  in  fruitful  rain  for  the  earth,  in  scathe- 
ijss  snow  to  the  sunshine, — so  blessing  the  years  to  come, 
hen  the  surest  knowledge  of  England  shall  be  of  the 
ill  of  her  heavenly  Father,  and  the  purest  art  of  England 
e  the  inheritance  of  her  simplest  children? 


The  following  letter  appeared  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of  April  22, 
584  (where  "A.  P.  Newton"  was  misprinted  ''G.  S.  Newton"): — 

I  To  the  Editor  of  the     Pall  Mall  Gazette  " 

I  Sir, — Will  you  permit  me,  so  far  as  I  may,  to  rectify  in  your 

columns  the  faultful  omission  in  my  last  Oxford  lectures  of  the 
name  of  Mr.  A.  P.  Newton  as  one  of  the  chief,  and  the  last, 
representatives  of  the  old  English  water-colour  landscape  school? 
My  own  personal  associations  with  the  works  of  Copley  Fielding 
and  Robson  led  me  to  dwell  on  them  at  so  great  length  that  1 
had  no  time  for  the  just  analysis  of  Mr.  Newton's  especial  power 
in  rendering  effects  of  light,  or  for  the  expression  of  my  deep  re- 
spect for  his  sincere  love  of  mountain  scenery  and  his  conscientious 
industry  in  its  unaffected  delineation.  It  is,  I  ti'ust,  by  this  time 
well  enough  known  that  I  never  write  for  money  interests;  but  it 
is  only  just  to  Mr.  Newton's  widow  that,  on  the  occasion  of  the 
approaching  sale  of  many  of  her  husband's  most  beautiful  works, 
such  weight  as  may  be  attached  to  my  estimate  of  them  should  not 
be  lost  by  my  inability  to  introduce  due  notice  of  them  in  the  short 
time  of  a  school  lecture. — I  am.  Sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

J.  RUSKIN. 

Brantwood,  April  21. 

3r  Ruskin's  notice  of  A.  P.  Newton  (1830-1883),  see  Academy  Notes, 
ol.  XIV.  pp.  201,  249. 

^  [Psalms  Iviii.  17.] 


APPENDIX 


192.  The  foregoing  lectures  were   written,  among  othe 
reasons,  with  the  leading  object  of  giving  some  permanently 
rational  balance  between  the  rhapsodies  of  praise  and  blam' 
which  idly  occupied  the  sheets  of  various   magazines  la^ 
year  on  the  occasion  of  the  general  exhibition  of  Rossetti 
works ;  ^  and  carrying  forward  the  same  temperate  estimat 
of  essential  value  in  the  cases  of  other  artists — or  artistes- 
of  real,  though  more  or  less  restricted,  powers,  whose  work 
were  immediately  interesting  to  the  British  public,  I  hav 
given  this  balance  chiefly  in  the  form  of  qualified,  thougii 
not  faint ^  praise,  which  is  the  real  function  of  just  criti) 
cism;^  for  the  multitude  can  always  see  the  faults  of  gooj 
work,  but  never,  unaided,  its  virtues :  on  the  contrary,  it  i 
equally  quick-sighted  to  the  vulgar  merits  of  bad  workj 
but  no  tuition  will  enable  it  to  condemn  the  vices  witl 
which  it  has  a  natural  sympathy ;  and,  in  general,  the  blam 
of  them  is  wasted  on  its  deaf  ears. 

When  the  course  was  completed,  I  found  that  m; 
audiences  had  been  pleased  by  the  advisedly  courteous  ton< 
of  comment  to  which  I  had  restricted  myself:  and  I  re 
ceived  not  a  few  congratulations  on  the  supposed  improve 
ment  of  my  temper,  and  manners,  under  the  stress  of  ag< 
and  experience.  The  tenor  of  this  terminal  lecture  maj 
perhaps  modify  the  opinion  of  my  friends  in  these  respects 
but  the  observations  it  contains  are  entirely  necessary  ii| 
order  to  complete  the  serviceableness,  such  as  it  may  be 
of  all  the  preceding  statements. 

'  [ITie  exhibition  of     Old  Masters"  at  the  Academy,  1883.] 
f  Damn  with  faint  praise " :  Pope,  Prologue  to  the  Satires,  201.] 

2  [For  other  passages  in  which  Ruskin  discusses  the  functions  of  criticism,  se< 
Vol.  XIV.  pp.  5,  45,  256,  262  ;  Vol.  XVI,  p.  32  ;  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  585  ;  and  severa 
letters  in  Arrows  of  the  Chace  (Vol.  XXXIV.).  For  a  more  detailed  list,  see  th( 
General  Index.] 

394 


1 


APPENDIX 


395 


193.  In  the  first  place,  may  I  ask  the  reader  to  consider 
vith  himself  why  British  painters,  great  or  small,  are  never 
ight  altogether  ?  Why  their  work  is  always,  somehow, 
lawed, — never  in  any  case,  or  even  in  any  single  picture, 
borough  ?  Is  it  not  a  strange  thing,  and  a  lamentable, 
■hat  no  British  artist  has  ever  lived,  of  whom  one  can  say 
.0  a  student,  ''Imitate  him — and  prosper";  while  yet  the 
Treat  body  of  minor  artists  are  continually  imitating  the 
inaster  who  chances  to  be  in  fashion;  and  any  popular 
nistake  will  carry  a  large  majority  of  the  Britannic  mind 
nto  laboriously  identical  blunder,  for  two  or  three  artistic 
venerations  ? 

194.  I  had  always  intended  to  press  this  question  home 
)n  my  readers  in  my  concluding  lecture ;  but  it  was  pressed 
nuch  more  painfully  home  on  myself  by  the  recent  exhibi- 
don  of  Sir  Joshua  at  Burlington  House  and  the  Grosvenor. 
There  is  no  debate  that  Sir  Joshua  is  the  greatest  figure- 
painter  whom  England  has  produced, — Gainsborough  being 
sketchy  and  monotonous  in  comparison,  and  the  rest 
virtually  out  of  court.  But  the  gathering  of  any  man's 
^ork  into  an  unintending  mass,  enforces  his  failings  in 
uckening  iteration,  while  it  levels  his  merits  in  monotony ;  ^ 
—and  after  shrinking,  here,  from  affectation  worthy  only  of 
:he  Bath  Parade,  and  mourning,  there,  over  ''negligence 
8t  for  a  fool  to  fall  by,"^  I  left  the  rooms,  really  caring  to 
remember  nothing,  except  the  curl  of  hair  over  St.  Cecilia's 
left  ear,  the  lips  of  Mrs.  Abington,  and  the  wink  of  Mrs. 
Nesbitt's  white  cat.f 

195.  It  is  true  that  I  was  tired,  and  more  or  less  vexed 
with  myself,  as  well   as   with   Sir  Joshua;   but  no  bad 

I  *  "  How  various  the  fellow  is ! "  Gainsborough  himself,  jealous  of  Sir 
jJoshua  at  the  ^'  private  view."  ^ 

t  The  pictures  were  Mrs.  Sheridan  as  St.  Cecilia  (Lord  Lansdowne), 
No.  209  in  the  R.A. ;  Mrs.  Abington  as  Miss  Prue  (Sir  C.  Miles),  and 
jMrs.  Nesbitt  as  Circe,  Nos.  7  and  11  in  the  Grosvenor  Gallery. 

j  1  [So  Ruskin  says  also  in  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  79  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  158)  but 
for  a  statement  of  another  side,  see  Vol.  XIII.  p.  177-] 

2  [Henry  VIIL,  Act  iii.  sc.  2,  lines  213-214.] 

^  [See  Fulcher's  Life  of  Gainsborough,  1856,  p.  151.] 


396 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


humour  of  mine  alters  the  fact,  that  Sir  Joshua  wa^ 
always  affected, — often  negligent, — sometimes  vulgar, — and 
never  sublime;  and  that,  in  this  collective  representation  oi 
English  Art  under  highest  patronage  and  of  utmost  value, 
it  was  seen,  broadly  speaking,  that  neither  the  painter  knew 
how  to  paint,  the  patron  to  preserve,  nor  the  cleaner  to 
restore. 

If  this  be  true  of  Sir  Joshua,  and  of  the  pubUc  ofi 
Lords  and  Ladies  for  whom  he  worked, — what  are  we  to 
say  of  the  multitude  of  entirely  uneducated  painters,  com-! 
peting  for  the  patronage  of  entirely  uneducated  people ;  and 
filling  our  annual  exhibitions,  no  more  with  what  Carlyle 
complains  of  as  the  Correggiosities  of  Correggio,^  but  with 
what  perhaps  may  be  enough  described  and  summed  under 
the  simply  reversed  phrase — the  Incorreggiosities  of  In- 
correggio  ? 

196.  And  observe  that  the  gist  of  this  grievous  question 
is  that  our  English  errors  are  those  of  very  amiable  and 
worthy  people,  conscientious  after  a  sort,  working  under 
honourable  encouragement,  and  entirely  above  the  tempta- 
tions which  betray  the  bulk  of  the  French  and  Italian 
schools  into  sharing  or  consulting  the  taste  only  of  the 
demi-monde.  ^ 

The  French  taste  in  this  respect  is  indeed  widely  and 
rapidly  corrupting  our  own,  but  such  corruption  is  recogniz- 1 
able  at  once  as  disease :  it  does  not  in  the  least  affect 
the  broad  questions  concerning  all  English  artists  that 
ever  were  or  are, — why  Hunt  can  paint  a  flower,  but  not 
a  cloud ;  Turner,  a  cloud,  but  not  a  flower  ;  ^ — Bewick,  a 
pig,  but  not  a  girl ;  ^  and  Miss  Greenaway  a  girl,  but  not 
a  pig.  ' 

As  I  so  often  had  to  say  in  my  lecture  on  the  inscruta- 
bility of  Clouds,  I  leave  the  question  with  you,  and  pass  on.* 

^  [For  the  reference,  see  Vol.  XX.  p.  106.] 

2  [See  above,  §  157  (p.  373).] 

3  [Compare  Vol.  XIV.  p.  494  ;  Vol.  XXII.  p.  399  ;  and  Pleasures  of  England, 
§118  (below,  p.  509).] 

*  [The  first  lecture  on  The  Storm-Cloud  of  the  Nineteenth  Century:  see  §§  13, 
14,  15  (Vol.  XXXIV.  pp.  18,  19,  20).] 


APPENDIX 


397 


197.  But,  extending  the  inquiry  beyond  England,  to  the 
causes  of  failure  in  the  art  of  foreign  countries,  I  have 
bspecially  to  signalize  the  French  contempt  for  the  *'Art 
le  Province,"  and  the  infectious  insanity  for  centralization, 
hroughout  Europe,  which  collects  necessarily  all  the  vicious 
elements  of  any  country's  life  into  one  mephitic  cancer  in 
ts  centre. 

All  great  art,  in  the  great  times  of  art,  is  provincial, 
howing  its  energy  in  the  capital,  but  educated,  and  chiefly 
i)roductive,  in  its  own  country  town.^    The  best  works  of 
borreggio  are  at  Parma,  but  he  lived  in  his  patronymic 
illage ;  the  best  works  of  Cagliari  at  Venice,  but  he  learned 

0  paint  at  Verona;  the  best  works  of  Angelico  are  at 
lome,  but  he  lived  at  Fesole ;  the  best  works  of  Luini 
X  Milan,  but  he  lived  at  Luino.  And,  with  still  greater 
jiecessity  of  moral  law,  the  cities  which  exercise  forming 
!)ower  on  style,  are  themselves  provincial.  There  is  no 
|ittic  style,  but  there  is  a  Doric  and  Corinthian  one. 
There  is  no  Roman  style,  but  there  is  an  Umbrian,  Tuscan, 
Lrombard,  and  Venetian  one.  There  is  no  Parisian  style, 
)ut  there  is  a  Norman  and  Burgundian  one.  There  is  no 
^ondon  or  Edinburgh  style,  but  there  is  a  Kentish  and 
Northumbrian  one. 

198.  Farther, — the  tendency  to  centralization,  which  has 
)een  fatal  to  art  in  all  times,  is,  at  this  time,  pernicious 
|Q  totally  unprecedented  degree,  because  the  capitals  of 
Surope  are  all  of  monstrous  and  degraded  architecture.  An 
iirtist  in  former  ages  might  be  corrupted  by  the  manners, 
Dut  he  was  exalted  by  the  splendour,  of  the  capital ;  and 
perished  amidst  magnificence-  of  palaces :  but  now — the 
iBoard  of  Works  is  capable  of  no  higher  skill  than  drainage, 
jind  the  British  artist  floats  placidly  down  the  maximum 
!urrent  of  the  National  Cloaca,  to  his  Dunciad  rest,^  con- 
ent,  virtually,  that  his  life  should  be  spent  at  one  end  of 

1  cigar,  and  his  fame  expire  at  the  other. 

*  [See  above,  §  65  (p.  Sll).] 

2  [See  Book  ii.  of  Pope's  Dunciad  for  Cloacina,  and  the  end  of  Book  iv.  for 
he  final  rest,  when  "Art  after  art  goes  out,  and  all  is  night."] 


398 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


In  literal  and  fatal  instance  of  fact — think  what  ruin  it 
is  for  men  of  any  sensitive  faculty  to  live  in  such  a  city 

as  London  is  now!^    Take  the  highest  and  lowest  state  of  j 

it:  you  have,  typically,  Grosvenor  Square, — an  aggregation  j 

of  bricks  and  railings,  with  not  so  much  architectural  faculty  j 

expressed  in  the  whole  cumber  of  them  as  there  is  in  a  i 

wasp  s  nest  or  a  worm-hole ; — and  you  have  the  rows  of'  j 

houses  which  you  look  down  into  on  the  south  side  of  t 

the  South- Western  line,  between  Vauxhall  and  Claphami  i 
Junction.    Between  those   two   ideals   the   London  artisti 

must  seek  his  own;  and  in  the  humanity,  or  the  vermin, i  } 

of  them,  worship  the  aristocratic   and   scientific  gods  of  i 

living  Israel.  l 

199.  In  the  chapter  called  "The  Two  Boyhoods"  ol  j 

Modern  Painters,^  I  traced,  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  the  I 
difference  between  existing  London  and  former  Venice,  in| 
their  effect,  as  schools  of  art,  on  the  minds  of  Turner  and 

Giorgione.    I  would  reprint  the  passage  here :  but  it  needs  j 

expansion  and  comment,  which  I  hope  to  give,  with  other  i 

elucidatory  notes  on  former  texts,  in  my  October  lectures.^  \ 
But  since  that  comparison  was  written,  a  new  element  of 

evil  has  developed  itself  against  art,  which  I  had  not  then  s 

so  much  as  seen  the  slightest  beginnings  of.    The  descrip-  j 

tion  of  the  school  of  Giorgione  ends  {Modern  Painters,  \ 
vol.  V.  p.  291^)  with  this  sentence: — 

"Ethereal  strength  of  Alps,  dreamlike,  vanishing  in  high  procession  , 
beyond  the  Torcellan  shore ;  blue  islands  of  Paduan  hills,  poised  in  the 
golden  west.     Above,  free  winds  and  Jlery  clouds  ranging  at  their  will; 
brightness  out  of  the  north,  and  balm  from  the  south,  and  the  Stars  of  the  j 
Evening  and  Morning  clear  in  the  limitless  light  of  arched  heaven  and 
circling  sea." 


^  [Compare  above,  pp.  361-362,  and  below,  p.  531.] 
2  [Ch.  ix.  part  ix.  vol.  v.  (Vol.  VII.  p.  374).] 

^  [The  lectures  in  the  October  term  1884,  on  "The  Pleasures  of  England," 
glanced  at  the  subject  only  :  see  p.  424.  Ruskin  had,  however,  already  reprinted 
the  passage  in  1881  in  a  chapter  ("  Castelfranco  ")  added  to  The  Stones  of  Venice: 
see  Vol.  XI.  p.  244.] 

*  [The  reference  is  to  the  original  editions ;  see  now  Vol.  VII.  p.  375.  The 
italics  were  here  introduced  by  Ruskin.] 


1 


APPENDIX 


399 


I  Now,  if  I  had  written  that  sentence  with  foreknowledge 
|[  the  approach  of  those  maUgnant  aerial  phenomena  which, 
l-ginning  ten  years  afterwards,  were  to  induce  an  epoch  of 
)ntinual  diminution  in  the  depth  of  the  snows  of  the  Alps, 
id  a  parallel  change  in  the  relations  of  the  sun  and  sky 
j)  organic  life,  I  could  not  have  set  the  words  down  with 
hove  concentrated  precision,  to  express  the  beautiful  and 
aalthy  states  of  natural  cloud  and  light,  to  which  the 
lague-cloud  and  plague-wind  of  the  succeeding  £era  were 
)  be  opposed.  Of  the  physical  character  of  these,  some 
3C0unt  was  rendered  in  my  lectures  at  the  London  Institu- 
on;^  of  their  effect  on  the  artistic  power  of  our  time,  I 
ave  to  speak  now;  and  it  will  be  enough  illustrated  by 
lerely  giving  an  accurate  account  of  the  weather  yesterday 
iOth  May,  1884). 

!  200.  Most  people  would  have  called  it  a  fine  day ;  it  was, 
\i  compared  with  other  days  of  this  spring,  exceptionally 
ear :  Helvellyn,  at  a  distance  of  fifteen  miles,  showing  his 
rassy  sides  as  if  one  could  reach  them  in  an  hour's  walk, 
he  sunshine  was  warm  and  full,  and  I  went  out  at  three 
I  the  afternoon  to  superintend  the  weeding  a  bed  of  wild 
jispberries  on  the  moor.  1  had  put  no  upper  coat  on^ — 
lad  the  moment  I  got  out  of  shelter  of  the  wood,  found 
lat  there  was  a  brisk  and  extremely  cold  wind  biow- 
ig  steadily  from  the  south-west — i.e.,  straight  over  Black 
oomb  from  the  sea.  Now,  it  is  perfectly  normal  to  have 
leen  east  wind  with  a  bright  sun  in  March,  but  to  have 
een  south-west  wind  with  a  bright  sun  on  the  20th  of 
lay  is  entirely  abnormal,  and  destructive  to  the  chief 
eauty  and  character  of  the  best  month  in  the  year. 

I  have  only  called  the  wind  keen, — bitter,  would  have 
leen  nearer  the  truth ;  even  a  young  and  strong  man  could 
jot  have  stood  inactive  in  it  with  safety  for  a  quarter  of 
n  hour;  and  the  danger  of  meeting  it  full  after  getting 
ot  in  any  work  under  shelter  was  so  great  that  I  had 

1  [On  The  Storm-Cloud  of  the  Nineteenth  Century:  see  Vol.  XXXIV.] 


400 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


instantly  to  give  up  all  idea  of  gardening,  and  went  up  t 
the  higher  moor  to  study  the  general  state  of  colour  an' 
light  in  the  hills  and  sky. 

201.  The  sun  was — the  reader  may  find  how  high  fo 
himself,  three  o'clock  p.m.,  on  20th  May,  in  latitude  55° :  a 
a  guess  40  degrees ;  and  the  entire  space  of  sky  under  hir 
to  the  horizon — and  far  above  him  towards  the  zenith — sa; 
40  degrees  all  round  him,  was  a  dull  pale  grey,  or  dirt 
white — very  full  of  light,  but  totally  devoid  of  colour  o 
sensible  gradation.    Common  flake-white  deadened  with  ; 
little  lampblack  would  give  all  the  colour  there  was  in  it,— 
a  mere  tinge  of  yellow  ochre  near  the  sun.    This  lifeles' 
stare  of  the  sky  changed  gradually  towards  the  zenith  int( 
a  dim  greyish  blue,  and  then  into  definite  blue, — or  at  leas 
what  most  people  w^ould  call  blue,  opposite  the  sun  answer 
ing  the  ordinary  purpose  of  blue  pretty  well,  though  realh 
only  a  bluish  grey.     The  main  point  was  to  ascertain  a* 
nearly  as  possible  the  depth  of  it,  as  compared  with  othei 
tints  and  lights. 

202.  Holding  my  arm  up  against  it  so  as  to  get  the 
shirt  sleeve  nearly  in  full  sunlight,  but  with  a  dark  side  ol 
about  a  quarter  its  breadth,  I  found  the  sky  quite  vigor 
ously  dark  against  the  white  of  the  sleeve,  yet  vigorous!) 
also  detached  in  light  beyond  its  dark  side.  Now  the  dark 
side  of  the  shirt  sleeve  was  pale  grey  compared  to  the 
sun-lighted  colour  of  my  coat-sleeve.  And  that  again  was 
luminous  compared  to  its  own  dark  side,  and  that  dark  side 
was  still  not  black.  Count  the  scale  thus  obtained.  You 
begin  at  the  bottom  with  a  tint  of  russet  not  reaching 
black  ;  you  relieve  this  distinctly  against  a  lighter  russet, 
you  relieve  that  strongly  against  a  pale  warm  grey,  you 
relieve  that  against  the  brightest  white  you  can  paint. 
Then  the  sky-blue  is  to  be  clearly  lighter  than  the  pale 
warm  grey,  and  yet  as  clearly  darker  than  the  white. 

203.  Any  landscape  artist  will  tell  you  that  this  opposi- 
tion cannot  be  had  in  painting  with  its  natural  force; — 
and  that  in  all  pictorial  use  of  the  efFect,  either  the  dark 


APPENDIX 


401 


de  must  be  exaggerated  in  depth,  or  the  rehef  of  the 
lue  from  it  sacrificed.     But,  though  I  began  the  study 
f  such  gradation  just  half  a  century  ago,  carrying  my 
cyanometer"  as  I  called  it^ — (a  sheet  of  paper  gradated 
cm  deepest  blue  to  white),  with  me  always  through  a 
immer's  journey  on  the  Continent  in  1835,  I  never  till 
issterday  felt  the  full  difficulty  of  explaining  the  enormous 
bwer  of  contrast  which  the  real  light  possesses  in  its  most 
blicate  tints.    I  note  this  in  passing  for  future  inquiry ;  ^  at 
l^esent  I  am  concerned  only  with  the  main  fact  that  the 
cirkest  part  of  the  sky-blue  opposite  the  sun  was  lighter,  by 
luch,  than  pure  white  in  the  shade  in  open  air — (that  is 
t  say,  lighter  by  much  than  the  margin  of  the  page  of 
lis  book  as  you  read  it) — and  that  therefore  the  total 
feet  of  the  landscape  was  of  diffused  cold  light,  against 
jhich  the  hills  rose  clear,  but  monotonously  grey  or  dull 
l-een — while  the  lake,  being  over  the  whole  space  of  it 
[dtated  by  strong  wind,  took  no  reflections  from  the  shores, 
id  was  nothing  but  a  flat  piece  of  the  same  grey  as  the 
y,  traversed  by  irregular  blackness  from  more  violent 
^ualls.    The  clouds,  considerable  in  number,  were  all  of 
em  alike  shapeless,  colourless,  and  lightless,  like  dirty 
ts  of  wool,  without  any  sort  of  arrangement  or  order  of 
tion,  yet  not  quiet ; — touching  none  of  the  hills,  yet  not 
1  gh  above  them ;  and  whatever  character  they  had,  enough 
(pressible  by  a  little  chance  rujbbing  about  of  the  brush 
(  arged  with  cleanings  of  the  palette. 

204.  Supposing  now  an  artist  in  the  best  possible  frame 
(I  mind  for  work,  having  his  heart  set  on  getting  a  good 
il)niston  subject ;  and  any  quantity  of  skill,  patience,  and 
viatsoever  merit  you  choose  to  grant  him, — set,  this  day, 
1  make  his  study;  what  sort  of  a  study  can  he  get?  In 
ie  first  place,  he  must  have  a  tent  of  some  sort — he 
(anot  sit  in  the  wind — and  the  tent  will  be  always  un- 
]gging  itself  and  flapping  about  his  ears— (if  he  tries  to 


1  [See  Vol.  I.  pp.  XXX.,  xxxi.] 

2  [To  this  subject,  however,  Ruskin  did  not  revert.] 
XXXIII.  2  C 


402 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


sketch  quickly,  the  leaves  of  his  sketch-book  will  all  bloi 
up  into  his  eyes  ^) ; — next,  he  cannot  draw  a  leaf  in 
foreground,  for  they  are  all  shaking  like  aspens ;  nor  tli 
branch  of  a  tree  in  the  middle  distance,  for  they  are  a 
bending  like  switches;  nor  a  cloud,  for  the  clouds  have 
outline;  nor  even  the  effect  of  waves  on  the  lake  surface 
for  the  catspaws  and  swirls  of  Avind  drive  the  dark  spac^' 
over  it  like  feathers.    The  entire  form-value  of  the  reflec 
tions,  the  colour  of  them  and   the  sentiment,  are  lostj 
(were  it  sea  instead  of  lake,  there  would  be  no  waves,  t! 
call  waves,  but  only  dodging  and  swinging  lumps  of  wate 
— dirty  or  dull  blue  according  to  the  nearness  to  coast 
The  mountains  have  no  contrast  of  colour,  nor  any  positiv| 
beauty  of  it :  in  the  distance  they  are  not  blue,  and  thoug 
clear  for  the  present,  are  sure  to  be  dim  in  an  hour  c. 
two,  and  will  probably  disappear  altogether  towards  evenini 
in  mere  grey  smoke.^  r  I 

What  sort  of  a  study  can  he  make  ?  What  sort  of  I 
picture  ?  He  has  got  his  bread  to  win,  and  must  make  hi! 
canvas  attractive  to  the  public — somehow.  What  resourc' 
has  he,  but  to  try  by  how  few  splashes  he  can  produc 
something  like  hills  and  water,  and  put  in  the  vegetable^ 
out  of  his  head  ? — according  to  the  last  French  fashion. 

205.  Now,  consider  what  a  landscape  painter's  worl 
used  to  be,  in  ordinary  spring  weather  of  old  times.  Yoi 
put  your  lunch  in  your  pocket,  and  set  out,  any  fia 
morning,  sure  that,  unless  by  a  mischance  which  needn'| 
be  calculated  on,  the  forenoon,  and  the  evening,  would  b<:i 
fine  too.  You  chose  two  subjects  handily  near  each  othei|| 
one  for  a.m.,  the  other  for  p.m.  ;  you  sate  down  on  th( 
grass  where  you  liked,  worked  for  three  or  four  hour| 
serenely,  with  the  blue  shining  through  the  stems  of  thf 
trees  like  painted  glass,  and  not  a  leaf  stirring ;  the  grasss; 
hoppers  singing,  flies  sometimes  a  little  troublesome,  ants 

*  No  artist  who  knows  his  business  ever  uses  a  block  book. 


1  [For  a  reference  to  §  204  here,  see  The  Storm-Cloudy  §  54  (Vol.  XXXIV.  p.  51).i 


APPENDIX 


403 


ilso,  it  might  be.  Then  you  ate  your  lunch — lounged  a 
ittle  after  it — perhaps  fell  asleep  in  the  shade,  woke  in  a 
Iream  of  whatever  you  liked  best  to  dream  of,— set  to 
vork  on  the  afternoon  sketch, — did  as  much  as  you  could 
)efore  the  glow  of  the  sunset  began  to  make  everything 
)eautiful  beyond  painting:  you  meditated  awhile  over  that 
mpossible,  put  up  your  paints  and  book,  and  walked  home, 
)roud  of  your  day's  work,  and  peaceful  for  its  future,  to 
upper. 

This  is  neither  fancy, — nor  exaggeration.  I  have  myself 
;pent  literally  thousands  of  such  days  in  my  forty  years  of 
lappy  work  between  1830  and  1870. 

206.  I  say  nothing  of  the  gain  of  time,  temper,  and 
teadiness  of  hand,  under  such  conditions,  as  opposed  to 
existing  ones;  but  we  must,  in  charity,  notice  as  one  in- 
l^vitable  cause  of  the  loose  and  flimsy  tree-drawing  of  the 
noderns,  as  compared  with  that  of  Titian  or  Mantegna,^ 
he  quite  infinite  difference  between  the  look  of  blighted 
bliage  quivering  in  confusion  against  a  sky  of  the  colour 
)f  a  pail  of  whitewash  with  a  little  starch  in  it;  and  the 
notionless  strength  of  olive  and  laurel  leaf,  inlaid  like  the 
vreaths  of  a  Florentine  mosaic  on  a  ground  of  lapis-lazuli. 

I  have,  above,  supposed  the  effects  of  these  two  different 
rinds  of  weather  on  mountain  country,  and  the  reader 
night  think  the  difference  of  that  effect  would  be  greatest 
n  such  scenery.  But  it  is  in  reality  greater  still  in  low- 
ands;  and  the  malignity  of  climate  most  felt  in  common 
jcenes.  If  the  heath  of  a  hill-side  is  blighted, — (or  burnt 
nto  charcoal  by  an  improving  farmer,)  the  form  of  the 
'ock  remains,  and  its  impression  of  power.  But  if  the 
ledges  of  a  country  lane  are  frizzled  by  the  plague  wind 
nto  black  tea,— what  have  you  left?  If  the  reflections 
n  the  lake  are  destroyed  by  wind,  its  ripples  may  yet 
be  graceful, — or  its  waves  sublime;— but  if  you  take  the 
reflections  out  of  a  ditch,  what  remains  for  you  but — 

1  [For  other  references  to  the  foliage  of  Titian,  see  Vol.  VII.  pp.  52,  56; 
md  to  that  of  Mantegna,  Vol.  XXI.  p.  140,  and  Vol.  XXXIV.  p  132.] 


404 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


ditch-water  ?  Or  again,  if  you  take  the  sunshine  from 
ravine  or  a  cliff*;  or  flood  with  rain  their  torrents  ( 
waterfalls,  the  sublimity  of  their  forms  may  be  increase* 
and  the  energy  of  their  passion;  but  take  the  sunshii 
from  a  cottage  porch,  and  drench  into  decay  its  hollyhoc 
garden,  and  you  have  left  to  you — how  much  less,  ho^^ 
much  worse  than  nothing? 

207.  Without  in  the  least  recognizing  the  sources  ( 
these  evils,  the  entire  body  of  English  artists,  through  th 
space  now  of  some  fifteen  years,  (quite  enough  to  paralyz( 
in  the  young  ones,  what  in  their  nature  was  most  sensitive 
had  been  thus  afflicted  by  the  deterioration  of  climat 
described  in  my  lectures  given  this  last  spring  in  London 
But  the  deteriorations  of  noble  subject  induced  by  th 
progress  of  manufactures  and  engineering  are,  though  als 
without  their  knowledge,  deadlier  still  to  them. 

208.  It  is  continually  alleged  in  Parliament  by  the  rail 
road,  or  building,  companies,  that  they  propose  to  rende 
beautiful  places  more  accessible  or  habitable,^  and  tha 
their  works"  will  be,  if  anything,  decorative  rather  thai 
destructive  to  the  better  civilized  scene.  But  in  all  thest 
cases,  admitting,  (though  there  is  no  ground  to  admit)  tha 
such  arguments  may  be  tenable,  I  observe  that  the  questioi 
of  sentiment  proceeding  from  association  is  always  omitted 
And  in  the  minds  even  of  the  least  educated  and  leas 
spiritual  artists,  the  influence  of  association  is  strong  beyonc 
all  their  consciousness,  or  even  belief. 

Let  me  take,  for  instance,  four  of  the  most  beautifuj^, 
and  picturesque  subjects  once  existing  in  Europe, — Furnes^ 
Abbey,  Conway  Castle,  the  Castle  of  Chillon,  and  thd 
Falls  of  Schafl*hausen.^  A  railroad  station  has  been  set  up 
within  a  hundred  yards  of  the  Abbey, — an  iron  railroad 
bridge  crosses  the  Conway  in  front  of  its  castle ;  a  stonei 
one  crosses  the  Rhine  at  the  top  of  its  cataract,  and  the 

^  [See,  again,  The  Storm-Cloud  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 
*  [See  Ruskin's  reply  to  such  allegations  in  his  paper  on  Railways  in  the  Lake 
District  (Vol.  XXXIV.  p.  140).] 

3  [Compare  Vol.  III.  p.  37,  and  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  89.] 


APPENDIX  405 

'J  jreat  Simplon  line  passes  the  end  of  the  drawbridge  of 

J'  'hillon.  Since  these  improvements  have  taken  place,  no 
icture  of  any  of  these  scenes  has  appeared  by  any  artist  of 

^  minence,  nor  can  any  in  future  appear.  Their  portraiture 
y  men  of  sense  or  feeling  has  become  for  ever  impossible. 
)iscord  of  colour  may  be  endured  in  a  picture — discord  of 
3ntiment,  never.  There  is  no  occasion  in  such  matters 
ir  the  protest  of  criticism.  The  artist  turns  unconsciously 
-but  necessarily — from  the  disgraced  noblesse  of  the  past, 
D  the  consistent  baseness  of  the  present;  and  is  content 
0  paint  whatever  he  is  in  the  habit  of  seeing,  in  the 

^  lanner  he  thinks  best  calculated  to  recommend  it  to  his 
astomers. 

i;  1  209.  And  the  perfection  of  the  mischief  is  that  the  very 
^  3W  who  are  strong  enough  to  resist  the  money  tempta- 
on,  (on  the  complexity  and  fatality  of  which  it  is  not 
ly  purpose  here  to  enlarge,)  are  apt  to  become  satirists 
^  tid  reformers,  instead  of  painters ;  and  to  lose  the  indignant 
assion  of  their  freedom  no  less  vainly  than  if  they  had  sold 
lemselves  with  the  rest  into  slavery.  Thus  Mr.  Herkomer, 
hose  true  function  was  to  show  us  the  dancing  of  Tyrolese 
easants  to  the  pipe  and  zither,  spends  his  best  strength  in 
ainting  a  heap  of  promiscuous  emigrants  in  the  agonies 
f  starvation :  ^  and  Mr.  Albert  Goodwin,  whom  I  have 
len  drawing,  with  Turnerian  precision,  the  cliffs  of  Orvieto 
ad  groves  of  Vallombrosa,^  must  needs  moralize  the  walls 
f  the  Old  Water-Colour  Exhibition  with  a  scattering  of 
ieletons  out  of  the  ugliest  scenes  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress, 
ad  a  ghastly  sunset,  illustrating  the  progress — in  the  con- 
^ary  direction — of  the  manufacturing  districts.^  But  in  the 
lurality  of  cases  the  metropolitan  artist  passively  allows 
imself  to  be  metropolized,  and  contents  his  pride  with  the 

^  [The  picture  called  "Pressing  West/'  showing  crowded  emigrants  at  Castle 
ardens,] 

2  [In  1872,  when  Mr.  Goodwin  was  in  Italy  with  Ruskin :  see  Vol,  XXII. 
xxvi.] 

[In  the  summer  exhibition  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Painters  in  Water-Colour, 
0.  69,  "Giant  Despair  discovering  the  Pilgrims/'  and  No.  62,  "A  Sunset  in  the 
anufacturing  Districts."] 


406  THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


display  of  his  skill  in  recommending  things  ignoble.  On- 
of  quite  the  best,  and  most  admired,  pieces  of  painting  ii 
the  same  Old  Water-Colour  Exhibition  was  Mr.  Marshall' 
fog  effect  over  the  Westminster  cab-stand;  while,  in  th* 
Royal  Institution,  Mr.  Severn  in  like  manner  spent  all  hi, 
power  of  rendering  sunset  light  in  the  glorification  of  th< 
Westminster  clock  tower.^    And  although  some  faint  yearn 
ings  for  the  rural  or  marine  are  still  unextinguished  ir 
the  breasts  of  the  elder  academicians,  or  condescendingh 
tolerated  in   their   sitters   by  the   younger   ones, — thougl 
Mr.  Leslie  still  disports  himself  occasionally  in  a  punt  ai 
Henley,  and  Mr.  Hook  takes  his  summer  lodgings,  as  usual 
on  the  coast,  and  Mr.  Collier  admits  the  suggestion  of  th( 
squire's  young  ladies,  that  they  may  gracefully  be  paintec 
in  a  storm  of  primroses, — the   shade   of  the  Metropoli; 
never  for  an  instant  relaxes  its  grasp  on  their  imagination 
Mr.  Leslie  cannot  paint  the  barmaid  at  the  Angler  s  Rest 
but  in  a  pair  of  high-heeled  shoes ;  Mr.  Hook  never  lifts  f 
wave  which  would  be  formidable  to  a  trim-built  wherry 
and  although  Mr.  Fildes  brought  some  agreeable  arrange 
ments  of  vegetables  from  Venice ;  and,  in  imitation  of  old 
William  Hunt,  here  and  there  some  primroses  in  turn 
biers  carried   out  the   sentiment  of  Mr.  Collier's  on  the 
floor, — not  all  the  influence  of  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  anci 
the  Wordsworth  Society  together  obtained,  throughout  tk 
whole  concourse  of  the  Royal  or  plebeian  salons  of  the 
town,  the  painting  of  so  much  as  one  primrose  nested  in  its 
rock,  or  one  branch  of  wind-tossed  eglantine. 

210.  As  I  write,  a  letter  from  Miss  Alexander  is  put 
into  my  hands,  of  which,  singularly,  the  closing  passage 
alludes  to  the  picture  of  Giorgione's,  which  I  had  pro- 
posed, in  terminating  this  lecture,  to  give,  as  an  instance 
of  the  undisturbed  art  of  a  faultless  master.^   It  is  dated 

1  ["Sunset  over  Westminster,"  No.  1079  in  the  Royal  Institute's  summer 
exhibition,  1884.] 

2  [For  a  reference  to  it  in  one  of  Raskin's  later  lectures  at  Oxford,  see  below, 
p.  503.] 


APPENDIX 


407 


Bassano  Veneto,  May  27th,"  and  a  few  sentences  of  the 
i    receding  context  will  better  present  the  words  I  wish  to 
uote : — 

"  I  meant  to  have  told  you  about  the  delightful  old  lady  whose  portrait 
am  taking.  Edwige  and  I  set  out  early  in  the  morning,  and  have  a 
ilightful  walk  up  to  the  city,  and  through  the  clean  Httle  streets  with 
,eir  low  Gothic  arcades  and  little  carved  balconies  full  of  flowers ;  meeting 
ibody  but  contadini,  mostly  women,  who,  if  we  look  at  them,  bow,  and 
aile,  and  say  *  Serva  sua/    The  old  lady  told  us  she  was  always  ready  to 

i  3gin  her  sitting  by  six  o'clock,  having  then  finished  morning  prayers  and 
•eakfast :  pretty  well  for  eighty-five,  I  think :  (she  says  that  is  her  age.) 
had  forgotten  until  this  minute  I  had  promised  to  tell  you  about  our 
sit  to  Castelfranco.  We  had  a  beautiful  day,  and  had  the  good  fortune 
find  a  fair  going  on,  and  the  piazza  full  of  contadini,  with  fruit,  chickens, 
c,  and  many  pretty  things  in  wood  and  basket  work.  Always  a  pretty 
ght ;   but  it  troubled  me  to  see   so   many  beggars,  who   looked  like 

\  spectable  old  people.  I  asked  Loredana  about  it,  and  she  said  they 
-re  contadini,  and  that  the  poverty  among  them  was  so  great,  that 
though  a  man  could  live,  poorly,  by  his  work,  he  could  never  lay  by 
{lything  for  old  age,  and  when  they  are  past  work  they  have  to  beg. 
I  cannot  feel  as  if  that  were  right,  in  such  a  rich  and  beautiful  country, 
id  it  is  certainly  not  the  case  on  the  estate  of  Marina  and  Silvia ;  ^  but 
am  afraid,  from  what  I  hear,  that  our  friends  are  rather  exceptional 
eople.  Count  Alessandro,  Marina's  husband,  always  took  an  almost 
aternal  care  of  his  contadini,  but  with  regard  to  other  contadini  in  these 
arts,  I  have  heard  some  heartbreaking  stories,  which  I  will  not  distress 
ou  by  repeating.  Giorgione's  Madonna,  whenever  I  see  it,  always  appears 
)  me  more  beautiful  than  the  last  time,  and  does  not  look  like  the  work 
f  a  mortal  hand.  It  reminds  me  of  what  a  poor  woman  said  to  me  once 
I  Florence,  'What  a  pity  that  people  are  not  as  large  now  as  they  used 
)  be ! '  and  when  I  asked  her  what  made  her  suppose  that  they  were 
rger  in  old  times,  she  said,  looking  surprised,  '  Surely  you  cannot  think 
lat  the  people  who  built  the  Duomo  were  no  larger  than  we  are.^'"^ 

Anima  Toscana  gentillissima, — truly  we  cannot  think  it, 
)ut  larger  of  heart  than  you,  no; — of  thought,  yes. 

211.  It  has  been  held,  I  believe,  an  original  and  valuable 
liscovery  of  Mr.  Taine's^  that  the  art  of  a  people  is  the 
latural  product  of  its  soil  and  surroundings. 

Allowing  the  art  of  Giorgione  to  be  the  wild  fruitage 
►f  Castelfranco,  and  that  of  Brunelleschi  no  more  than  the 

1  [For  various  references  to  these  ladies  of  Bassano,  see  the  Index  in  Vol. 
CXXII.  (p.  336).] 

2  [See  also  Edwige's  "love  of  the  Duomo,"  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  SOL] 

3  [See  Vol.  XXII.  p.  313.] 


THE  ART  OF  ENGLAND 


exhalation  of  the  marsh  of  Arno;  and  perceiving  as  I  dc 
the  existing  art  of  England  to  be  the  mere  effluence  o 
Grosvenor  Square  and  Clapham  Junction, — I  yet  trust  tc 
induce  in  my  readers,  during  hours  of  future  council,  somt 
doubt  whether  Grosvenor  Square  and  Clapham  Junction 
be  indeed  the  natural  and  divinely  appointed  produce  of 
the  Valley  of  the  Thames.^ 

Brantwood, 

Whit-Tuesday,  1884. 

1  [See  The  Pleasures  of  England,  §  5  (below,  p.  423).] 


IV 

THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

(1884) 


1 


HE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND. 


LECTURES  GIVEN  IN  OXFORD, 


BY 

JOHN  RUSKIN,  D.C.L.,  LL.D., 

)NORAKY  STUDENT  OF  CHRIST  CHURCH,  AND  HONORARY  FELLOW  OF  CORPUS-CHRISTI  COLLEGE, 

DURING  HIS 

SECOND  TENURE  OF  THE  SLAVE  PROFESSORSHIP. 


GEORGE  ALLEN, 
SUNNYSIDE,  ORPINGTON,  KENT. 
1884-5- 


[Bibliographical  Note. — The  Lectures  entitled  The  Pleasures  of  England  were 
delivered  at  Oxford,  and  announced  in  the  University  Gazette^  October  10, 
1884,  in  the  following  terms  : — 

SLADE  PROFESSOR  OF  FINE  ART:  JOHN  RUSKIN,  M.A. 

The  Professor  will  give  a  Course  of  Seven  Lectures  on  "The  Pleasures  of  England," 
in  sequel  to  those  on  "  The  Art  of  England,"  in  the  Lecture  Theatre,  University- 
Museum,  at  2.30  P.M.,  on  Saturdays  and  Mondays,  repeating  the  Saturday's  lecture 
on  the  Monday,  from  October  18  to  December  1,  the  Lectures  being  on  the  following 
subjects : — 

Lecture  I. — Bertha  to  Osburga.  "The  Pleasures  of  Learning."  October  18 
and  20. 

Lecture  II. — Alfred  to  the  Confessor.  "  The  Pleasures  of  Faith."  October  25 
and  27. 

Lecture  III. — The  Confessor  to  Cceur  de  Lion.  "  The  Pleasures  of  Deed."  Novem- 
j    ber  1  and  3. 

Lecture  IV. — Coeur  de  Lion  to  Elizabeth.  "  The  Pleasures  of  Fancy."  November  8 
and  10. 

Lecture  V. — Protestantism.    "  The  Pleasures  of  Truth."    November  15  and  17. 
Lecture  VI. — Atheism.    "The  Pleasures  of  Sense."    November  22  and  24. 
Lecture  VII. — Mechanism.     "The  Plea.sures  of  Nonsense."    November  29  and 
December  1. 

j  An  '^amended  notice"  (in  the  Gazette  of  October  14,  1884),  while  repeat- 
!  ing  the  above,  added  that  "  Admission  will  be  by  Ticket,  which  may 
j  be  obtained  on  application  at  the  Ruskin  School,  Beaumont  Street.  .  .  . 

Tickets  for  the  Saturday's   Lecture  are  reserved  for  Members  of  the 

University." 

Of  the  lectures  thus  announced,  only  the  iirst  five  were  delivered,  and 
only  the  first  four  were  published  by  Ruskin. 

In  place  of  Lectures  VI.  and  VII.,  which  were  postponed,  Ruskin 
delivered  three  others,  as  follow  : — 

"A  Lecture  on  Patience"  (Readings  from  The  Cestus  of  Aglaia  and 
8t.  Mark's  i^e^O-— November  22  and  24. 

''Birds  and  How  to  Paint  Them."— November  29  and  December  1. 

"  Landscape."    December  6  and  8. 

For  a  bibliographical  note  on  these  substituted  lectures,  see  below, 
p.  522. 

In  the  University  Gazette  of  March  10,  1885,  the  postponed  lectures 
were  thus  announced  : — 

SLADE  PROFESSOR  OF  FINE  ART:  J.  RUSKIN,  M.A. 

Subject.    The  Pleasures  of  England  (continued). 

Time.    Early  in  May. 

Place.    The  Ruskin  School. 
There  will  be  only  two  Lectures,  once  given  : — 

Lecture  VI.  Atheism.    The  Pleasures  of  Sense. 

Lecture  VII.  Mechanism.    The  Pleasures  of  Nonsense, 
The  exact  dates  of  delivery  will  be  arranged  with  the  concurrence  of  the  otner 
Professors, 

This  notice  was  repeated  on  April  17,  but  on  April  28  the  following 

intimation  appeared  : — 

"Mr,  Ruskin  having  sent  in  his  resignation  of  the  Professorship,  the  announcs- 
ment  of  the  Course  of  Lectures  which  was  reprinted  in  the  Gazette  of  April  17  is 
withdrawn." 

413 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


Lectures  I.  to  V.  were  reported  (by  E.  T.  Cook)  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette 
of  October  20  and  27,  November  3,  10,  and  17  respectively. 

They  were  reprinted  by  him  in  Studies  in  Ruskin,  1890  (and  again  in 
the  second  edition  of  that  work,  1891),  pp.  211-268,  with  the  following 
introductory  remarks  :— 

"The  course  bad  clearly  not  been  so  carefully  prepared,  nor  was  the  lecturer's  line 
of  thought  so  closely  reasoned,  as  in  'The  Art  of  England.'  My  reports  took  the 
form,  therefore,  of  'digested  plans'  (so  Mr.  Ruskin  was  kind  enough  to  call  them), 
'summarizing  a  line  of  thought  not  always  by  me  enough  expressed,  and  completinj^ 
and  illustrating  it  from  other  parts  of  my  books,  often  more  fully  than,  against  time", 
I  could  do  myself.'  Accordingly  I  reprint  these  reports  here  in  their  original  form^ 
in  the  hope  that  they  may  be  found  by  a  reader  here  and  there  to  serve  as  useful 
companions  to  the  printed  lectures." 

The  following  letter  from  Ruskin  (referred  to  in  the  preceding  remarks) 
appeared  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of  November  19  : — 

To  the  Editor  of  the  ''Pall  Mall  Gazette" 

Sir, — I  have  seldom  had  occasion  to  pay  either  compliments  or 
thanks  to  the  British  reporter ;  but  1  must  very  seriously  acknowledge 
the  help  now  afforded  me  by  the  digested  plans  of  my  Oxford  lectures 
drawn  up  for  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette — very  wonderful  pieces  of  work, 
it  seems  to  me,  not  only  in  summarizing,  without  any  help  from  me 
whatever,  a  Une  of  thought  not  always  by  me  enough  expressed  ;  but 
in  completing  and  illustrating  it  from  other  parts  of  my  books — often 
more  fully  than,  against  time,  I  could  do  myself.  Hitherto,  there  have 
been  only  two  errata  worth  correction  :  in  last  Monday's  (November  10), 
2nd  page,  32  lines  up,  for  "Barbara"  read  '^Athena";  and  in  report 
of  former  lecture  (November  3,  2nd  page,  33  lines  up),  for  ''  Athena 
Regina"  read  "Athena  of  -^gina."  This  erratum  should  have  caught 
the  reporter's  eye  ;  for  he  ought  to  have  known  by  his  evident  fami- 
liarity with  my  books  that  I  never  use  a  Latin  adjunct  to  a  Greek 
noun ;  but,  as  it  happens,  the  mistake  exactly  illustrates  the  confused 
Damascus  signature  of  the  Saxon  language.  Edgar  of  England  writes, 
as  before  noted,  his  own  name  in  Saxon,  his  kingdom's  in  Latin,  and 
his  authority's  in  Greek  ;  "  F^go  Edgar,  totius  Albionis — BASILEUS," 
and  his  queen  would  have  written  "  Basilissa."  And  herein  is  to  be 
observed  the  advantage  of  a  mixed  language  in  conveying  complete 
definition.  The  Roman  word  "  imperator  "  expressed  only  the  extending 
of  Roman  moral  law,  or  imperium,  over  subject  States.  But  "Basileus" 
means  the  extension  of  Christ's  inevitable  and  irresistible  law  over 
them,  in  an  entirely  despotic  manner. — I  am,  Sir,  your  obedient 
servant, 

John  Ruskin. 

Oxford,  Nov.  14. 

Lectures  as  thus  reported,  often  differ  from  the  text  as  after- 

wards printed  by  Ruskin,  and  the  additional  passages  are  now  quoted  from 
the  reports  in  footnotes  (see,  e.g.,  pp.  462,  478,  481). 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


ISSUE  IN  PARTS 

As  already  stated,  only  Lectures  l.-IV.  of  The  Pleasures  of  England  were 
published  by  Ruskin.    They  appeared  in  four  separate  Parts  :— 

.  Part  /.,  containing  Lecture  L  (October  1884).  The  title-page  was  as 
shown  here  (p.  411),  except  for  the  words  "Lecture  L  |  The  Pleasures  of 
Learning,"  and  the  date  ^^1884." 

Small  quarto  (uniform  with  The  Art  of  England) ,  pp.  ii.  +36.  Title-page 
(with  imprint  in  the  centre  of  the  reverse — "Printed  by  |  Hazell,  Watson 
and  Viney,  Limited,  |  London  and  Aylesbury"),  pp.  i.-ii.     Fly-title  to 
Lecture  I.  (with  blank  reverse),  pp.  1-2  ;  text  of  the  Lecture,  pp.  3-36. 

Part  IL,  containing  Lecture  II.  (November  1884).  The  title-page  of 
this  and  the  succeeding  Parts  was  changed,  thus : — 

The  Pleasures  of  England.  |  Lectures  given  in  Oxford,  j  by  |  John 
Ruskin,  D.C.L.,  LL.D.  |  in  Michaelmas  Term,  |  1884.  |  Lecture  Ii.  | 
The  Pleasures  of  Faith.  |  George  Allen,  |  Sunnyside,  Orpington,  Kent, 
I  1884. 

Title-page  (with  imprint  on  the  reverse),  pp.  i.-ii. ;  fly-title  to  Lecture  II., 
pp.  37-38  ;  lecture,  pp.  39-80. 

Part  in.,  containing  Lecture  III.  (February  1885).  Title-page  as  in 
Part  II.,  with  alteration  of  lecture  and  date. 

Title-page  (with  blank  reverse),  pp.  i.-ii.  ;  fly-title  to  Lecture  III., 
pp.  81-82  ;  lecture,  pp.  83-121  ;  p.  122  is  blank. 

This  lecture  had  been  announced  as  "The  Confessor  to  Coeur  de  Lion," 
but  as  printed  (in  this  and  the  later  editions)  it  was  entitled  "Alfred  to 
Coeur  de  Lion."    In  the  present  edition,  the  original  title  has  been  restored. 

Part  IV.,  containing  Lecture  IV.  (April  1885). — Title-page  as  in  Part  III., 
with  alteration  of  lecture. 

Title-page  (with  the  imprint  again  on  the  reverse),  pp.  i.-ii.  ;  fly-title 
to  Lecture  IV.,  pp.  123-124;  lecture,  pp.  125-160.  Following  p.  160  is  an 
unnumbered  page  (with  blank  reverse),  containing  the  following : — 

NOTES 

i  1.  The  Five  Christmas  Days.  (These  were  drawn  out  on  a  large  and  conspicuous 
I    diagram. ) 

These  days,  as  it  happens,  sum  up  the  History  of  their  Five  Centuries. 
Christmas  Day,    49(5.  Clovis  baptized. 

,,      800.  Charlemagne  crowned. 
,,     1041.  Vow  of  the  Count  of  Aversa  (§  77). 
,,  ,,     1066.  The  Conqueror  crowned. 

,,  ,,     1130.  Eoger  JI.  crowned  King  of  the  Two  Sicilies. 

2.  For  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  two  pictures  were  shown  and  commented 
on — the  two  most  perfect  pictures  in  the  world. 

(1)  A  small  piece  from  Tintoret's  Paradiso  in  the  Ducal  Palace,  representing  the 
group  of  St.  Ambrose,  St.  Jerome,  St.  Gregory,  St.  Augustine,  and  behind  St.  Augustine 
his  mother  watching  him,  her  chief  joy  even  in  Paradise. 

(2)  The  Arundel  Society's  reproduction  of  the  Altar-piece  by  Giorgione  in  his 
native  hamlet  of  Castel  Franco.  The  Arundel  Society  has  done  more  for  us  than  we 
have  any  notion  of. 


416        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


These  Notes  were  taken  from  the  reports  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  and 
are  now  printed  (with  additions,  in  the  first  case,  from  Ruskin's  MS.,  and 
in  the  second,  from  the  report)  in  their  proper  places  (see  pp.  480, 
503  n.). 

Each  of  the  four  Parts  was  issued  in  buff-coloured  paper  wrappers,  with 
the  title-page  (enclosed  in  a  plain  ruled  frame)  reproduced  upon  the  front ; 
the  words  ''Price  One  Shilling"  being  added  at  the  foot,  below  the  rule. 
4000  copies.    All  the  Parts  are  still  current. 

No  more  Parts  were  issued,  and  no  preliminary  matter  was  supplied; 
nor  were  the  Parts  ever  issued  by  the  publisher  in  volume  form,  though 
the  remaining  Parts  were  for  some  time  announced  as  being  in  pre- 
paration. 

ISSUE  WITH  "THE  ART  ENGLAND" 

In  1898  the  four  lectures  were  issued  in  a  volume  together  with  The 
Art  of  England  (see  above,  p.  262). 

The  Pleasures  of  England  occupied  pp.  261-41 5  of  that  volume,  thus : 
Half-title  (with  blank  reverse),  pp.  261-262  ;  lectures,  pp.  263-397  ;  notes, 
p.  398;  fiy-title  ('^  Index,"  with  blank  reverse),  pp.  399-400;  index  (by 
Mr.  Wedderburn),  pp.  401-415. 

In  this  edition,  the  sections  were  numbered. 

For  re-issues  of  it  and  for  the  Pocket  Edition,  see  above,  pp.  262,  263. 


Reviews  of,  or  articles  upon,  Ruskin's  lectures  appeared  (among  other 
places)  in  the  Saturday  Review,  October  25,  1884  {"  Professor  Ruskin's 
Pleasures  of  Learning");  the  Spectator,  November  1,  1884  ("Mr.  Ruskin 
on  '  The  Pleasures  of  Faith ' ") ;  the  St.  James's  Gazette,  November  17, 
1884  ;  the  World,  November  19,  1884 ;  and  the  Morning  Post,  November 
25,  1884. 


VaricB  Lectiones. — Between  the  edition  in  Parts  and  that  issued  with 
The  Art  of  England,  there  are  the  following  differences  (besides  those 
already  mentioned): — 

The  dates  of  delivery  are  added  after  the  titles  of  the  several  lectures 
in  the  later  issue. 

The  sections  were  not  numbered  in  the  earlier  issue,  except  that  in 
Lecture  I.  §§  1-3  were  numbered. 

In  the  later  issue,  notes  were  added  (by  the  editor  who  saw  the  book 
through  the  press  for  Ruskin)  to  §§  5,  89  (the  first  note) ;  whilst  to  the 
second  note  in  §  53,  and  to  the  note  in  §  80,  references  were  added. 
These  added  notes  have  now  been  revised  with  new  references. 

In  the  earlier  issue,  the  fly-title  to  Lecture  IV.  added  the  dates 
"(1189-1558)." 

In  the  present  edition,  the  following  alterations  have  been  made  : — 
§  12.  "Mr.  Hodgetts's  book"  is  a  correction  for  "Mr.  Hodgett's  book." 
§  40,  line  1,  ^'word'^  has  been  corrected  to  ^'^  words." 
§  43,  hitherto  there  have  been  inverted  commas,  thus,  "  The  ancient 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 


417 


church,  ^situated  low/  indicated  in  this  vision  the  one  ...  of  St.  Peter;" 
(you  must  read  that  for  yourselves;)  *^but  also  because  .  .  — The  passage, 
however,  is  not  quoted  textually  from  Stanley.  The  inverted  commas 
have  been  removed ;  there  were  none  in  the  first  proof  (for  which  see 
above,  p.  Ixxii.). 

§  53,  hitherto  there  has  been  the  following  footnote  at  '^This  for  the 
philosophy"^" : — 

^'  Here  one  of  the  "Stones  of  Westminster"  was  shown  aud  commented  on. 

The  note  does  not  appear  in  the  first  proof,  corrected  by  Ruskin  himself. 
It  must  have  been  added  by  some  one  else  in  preparing  the  lecture  for 
press,  and  ^v'as  probably  due  to  a  misunderstanding  of  a  fanciful  headline 
in  the  report  of  the  lecture  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  (^^  The  Stones  of 
Westminster").  At  any  rate,  Ruskin  did  not  exhibit  any  piece  of  the 
Abbey  ;  nor  did  he  interrupt  his  readings  from  St.  Augustine  and  Alfred 
at  this  point  by  any  comments  on  the  architecture  of  the  Abbey. 

§  53,  hitherto  the  words  now  in  the  note — "Compare  the  legend  .  .  . 
sevum" — have  been  interpolated  in  the  text,  the  note  reading,  "At  Munich: 
the  leaf  .  .  ." — Ruskin  himself  in  a  note  to  Lecture  IV.  (§  110)  called 
attention  to  this  as  a  mistake,  but  it  has  not  hitherto  been  corrected. 

§  63,  inverted  commas  have  been  inserted  to  indicate  the  limits  of 
the  textual  quotation  from  Carlyle. 

§  67,  the  section  hitherto  has  been  made  to  begin  with  the  quotation. 

§  77,  inverted  commas  have  been  removed  from  the  passage,  "The 
Prince  .  .  .  commander-in-chief,"  as  it  is  an  abstract,  and  not  a  textual 
quotation,  from  Sismondi. 

§  99,  line  81,  see  p.  490  n. 

The  Notes  at  the  end  have  been  transferred  (see  above,  pp.  415-416).] 


XXXIIl. 


CONTENTS 


LECTURE  I 

PAGE 

The  Pleasures  of  Learning  .       .       .       .       .  .421 

Bertha  to  Osburga 

LECTURE  II 

The  Pleasures  of  Faith       .....       ...  439 

Alfred  to  the  Confessor 

LECTURE  III 

The  Pleasures  of  Deed       ........  458 

The  Confessor  to  Cceur  de  Lion 

postscript  :  the  five  Christmas  days      .....  480 
LECTURE  IV 

The  Pleasures  of  Fancy      .       .       .       .       .       .       .  ,481 

C(EUR  DE  Lion  to  Elizabeth 

(Added  in  this  Edition) 
LECTURE  V 

Protestantism  :  The  Pleasures  of  Truth     .       .       .       .       .  505 


419 


^HE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

LECTURE  I 
THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING 
BERTHA  TO  OSBURGA 

{Delivered  I8th  and  9.0th  October  1884) 

.  In  the  short  review  of  the  present  state  of  English  Art, 
iven  you  last  year,  I  left  necessarily  many  points  untouched, 
,nd  others  unexplained.  The  seventh  lecture,  which  I  did 
lot  think  it  necessary  to  read  aloud,  furnished  you  with 
ome  of  the  corrective  statements  of  which,  whether  spoken 
r  not,  it  was  extremely  desirable  that  you  should  estimate 
he  balancing  weight.  These  I  propose  in  the  present  course 
arther  to  illustrate,  and  to  arrive  with  you  at,  I  hope,  a 
ist — ^you  would  not  wish  it  to  be  a  flattering — estimate  of 
he  conditions  of  our  English  artistic  life,  past  and  present, 
Q  order  that  with  due  allowance  for  them  we  may  deter- 
aine,  with  some  security,  what  those  of  us  who  have 
acuity  ought  to  do,  and  those  who  have  sensibility,  to 
dmire. 

2.  In  thus  rightly  doing  and  feehng,  you  will  find 
ummed  a  wider  duty,  and  granted  a  greater  power,  than 
he  moral  philosophy  at  this  moment  current  with  you  has 
ver  conceived ;  and  a  prospect  opened  to  you  besides,  of 
uch  a  Future  for  England  as  you  may  both  hopefully  and 
)roudly  labour  for  with  your  hands,  and  those  of  you  who 
re  spared  to  the  ordinary  term  of  human  life,  even  see 


422         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


with  your  eyes/  when  all  this  tumult  of  vain  avarice  anc 
idle  pleasure,  into  which  you  have  been  plunged  at  birthi 
shall  have  passed  into  its  appointed  perdition.  ' 

3.  I  wish  that  you  would  read  for  introduction  to  the 
lectures  I  have  this  year  arranged  for  you,  that  on  the 
Future  of  England,  which  I  gave  to  the  cadets  at  Woolwich 
in  the  first  year  of  my  Professorship  here,**^  1869 ;  and  which 
is  now  placed  as  the  main  conclusion  of  The  Crown  of  Wila 
Olive :^  and  with  it,  very  attentively,  the  close  of  my  in-j 
augural  lecture  given  here;  for  the  matter,  no  less  than 
the  tenor  of  which,  I  was  reproved  by  all  my  friends,  as 
irrelevant  and  ill-judged ; — which,  nevertheless,  is  of  all  the 
pieces  of  teaching  1  have  ever  given  from  this  chair,  the 
most  pregnant  and  essential  to  whatever  studies,  whether 
of  Art  or  Science,  you  may  pursue,  in  this  place  or  else-| 
where,  during  your  lives.  | 

4.  The  opening  words  of  that  passage  I  will  take  leave 
to  read  to  you  again, — for  they  must  still  be  the  ground 
of  whatever  help  I  can  give  you,  worth  your  acceptance: — 

"There  is  a.  destiny  now  possible  to  us — the  highest  ever  set  before  a 
nation  to  be  accepted  or  refused.  We  are  still  undegenerate  in  race ;  a 
race  mingled  of  the  best  northern  blood.  We  are  not  yet  dissolute  in 
temper,  but  still  have  the  firmness  to  govern,  and  the  grace  to  obey.  We 
have  been  taught  a  religion  of  pure  mercy,  which  we  must  either  now 
betray,  or  learn  to  defend  by  fulfilling.  And  we  are  rich  in  an  inherit- 
ance of  honour,  bequeathed  to  us  through  a  thousand  years  of  noble  history, 
which  it  should  be  our  daily  thirst  to  increase  with  splendid  avarice,  so 
that  Englishmen,  if  it  be  a  sin  to  covet  honour,  should  be  the  most 
offending  souls  alive.  Within  the  last  few  years  we  have  had  the  laws 
of  natural  science  opened  to  us  with  a  rapidity  which  has  been  blinding 
by  its  brightness ;  and  means  of  transit  and  communication  given  to  us, 
which  have  made  but  one  kingdom  of  the  habitable  globe.  One  kingdom; 
— but  who  is  to  be  its  king  ?  Is  there  to  be  no  king  in  it,  think  you, 
and  every  man  to  do  that  which  is  right  in  his  own  eyes.^  Or  only 
kings  of  terror,  and  the  obscene  empires  of  Mammon  and  Belial }  Or  will 
you,  youths  of  England,  make  your  country  again  a  royal  throne  of  kings; 
a  sceptred  isle,  for  all  the  world  a  source  of  light,  a  centre  of  peace; 


1  [Matthew  xiii.  15.] 

^  [The  MS.  reads,  "the  year  when  I  first  accepted  my  Professorship."  Though 
appointed  in  1869,  Ruskin  did  not  take  up  the  duties  till  1870.] 
3  [Vol.  XVIII.  pp.  494-514.] 


I.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING  423 


Distress  of  Learning  and  of  the  Arts ; — faithful  guardian  of  great  memories 
n  the  midst  of  irreverent  and  ephemeral  visions ; — faithful  servant  of  time- 
ried  principles,  under  temptation  from  fond  experiments  and  licentious 
iesires ;  and  amidst  the  cruel  and  clamorous  jealousies  of  the  nations,  wor- 
hipped  in  her  strange  valour  of  goodwill  towards  men?"^ 

5.  The  fifteen  years  that  have  passed  since  I  spoke  these 
vords  must,  I  think,  have  convinced  some  of  my  immediate 
learers  that  the  need  for  such  an  appeal  was  more  pressing 
jhan  they  then  imagined; — while  they  have  also  more  and 
nore  convinced  me  myself  that  the  ground  I  took  for  it 
yas  secure,  and  that  the  youths  and  girls  now  entering  on 
he  duties  of  active  life  are  able  to  accept  and  fulfil  the 
lope  I  then  held  out  to  them.^ 

In  which  assurance  I  ask  them  to-day  to  begin  the 
jxamination  with  me,  very  earnestly,  of  the  question  laid 
before  you  in  that  seventh  of  my  last  year's  lectures,^ 
vhether  London,  as  it  is  now,  be  indeed  the  natural,  and 
herefore  the  heaven-appointed  outgrowth  of  the  inhabita- 
tion, these  1800  years,  of  the  valley  of  the  Thames  by  a 
progressively  instructed  and  disciplined  people ;  or  if  not,  in 
jvhat  measure  and  manner  the  aspect  and  spirit  of  the  great 
iity  may  be  possibly  altered  by  your  acts  and  thoughts. 

6.  In  my  introduction  to  The  Economist  of  Xenophon 
[  said  that  every  fairly  educated  European  boy  or  girl 
)ught  to  learn  the  history  of  five  cities, — Athens,  Rome, 
iV'enice,  Florence,  and  London ;  *  that  of  London  including, 
3r  at  least  compelling  in  parallel  study,  some  knowledge 
also  of  the  history  of  Paris. 

I  A  few  words  are  enough  to  explain  the  reasons  for  this 
johoice.  The  history  of  Athens,  rightly  told,  includes  all 
jthat  need  be  known  of  Greek  religion  and  arts.  That  of 
|Rome,  the  victory  of  Christianity  over  Paganism;  those  of 
!\^enice  and  Florence  sum  the  essential  facts  respecting  the 
Christian  arts  of  Painting,  Sculpture,  and  Music;  and  that 

1  ^Lectures  on  Art,  §  28  (Vol.  XX.  pp.  41-42).] 

*  [Compare  Art  of  England,  %  154  (above,  p.  370).] 
[The  Art  of  England,  §  198  (above,  p.  398).] 

*  [Vol.  XXXI.  p.  6.] 


424        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


of  London,  in  her  sisterhood  with  Paris,  the  development  oli 
Christian  Chivahy  and  Philosophy,  with  their  exponent  art 
of  Gothic  architecture. 

Without  the  presumption  of  forming  a  distinct  design,; 
I  yet  hoped  at  the  time  when  this  division  of  study  was 
suggested,  with  the  help  of  my  pupils,  to  give  the  out- 
lines of  their  several  histories  during  my  work  in  Oxford. 
Variously  disappointed  and  arrested,  ahke  by  difficulties  of 
investigation  and  failure  of  strength,  I  may  yet  hope  to  lay 
down  for  you,  beginning  with  your  own  metropolis,  some 
of  the  lines  of  thought  in  following  out  which  such  a  task 
might  be  most  effectively  accomplished. 

7.  You  observe  that  I  speak  of  architecture  as  the  chief 
exponent  of  the  feelings  both  of  the  French  and  English 
races.    Together  with  it,  however,  most  important  evidence  j 
of  character  is  given  by  the  illumination  of  manuscripts,  I 
and  by  some  forms  of  jewellery  and  metallurgy :  ^  and  my 
purpose  in  this  course  of  lectures  is  to  illustrate  by  all  these 
arts  the  phases  of  national  character  which  it  is  impossible 
that  historians  should  estimate,  or  even  observe,  with  accu-l 
racy,  unless  they  are  cognizant  of  excellence  in  the  aforesaid 
modes  of  structural  and  ornamental  craftmanship.^ 

8.  In  one  respect,  as  indicated  by  the  title  chosen  for 
this  course,  I  have  varied  the  treatment  of  their  subject 
from  that  adopted  in  all  my  former  books.  Hitherto,  I 
have  always  endeavoured  to  illustrate  the  personal  temper 
and  skill  of  the  artist ;  holding  the  wishes  or  taste  of  his 

»  [The  MS.  adds  :—  ' 
.  .  metallurg-y  ;  but  as  all  the  most  beautiful  forms  of  writing  belong 
to  religious  service,  and  of  craftmanship  to  knightly  dress  and  armour, 
if  V7e  associate  the  scriptorium  with  the  minster,  and  the  armoury  with  the 
castle,  you  will  find  that  the  history  of  London  would  virtually  crystallize 
itself  round  that  of  two  buildings,  old  H^estminster  Abbey  and  the  Tower, 
down  to  the  time  of  the  fall  of  the  Norman  dynasty."] 
^  [The  MS.  here  adds  a  passage  of  some  autobiographical  interest: — 

"You  may  perhaps  be  surprised  at  my  speaking  of  illumination  and 
metal  works  as  subjects  which  have  engaged  so  much  of  my  time  and 
thought,  because  I  have  never  written  anything  of  importance  about  either 
of  them.  But  I  have  learned  far  more  in  past  years  than  1  ever  wrote. 
On  one  occasion  I  examined,  without  missing  a  volume,  every  illuminated 
manuscript  in  the  British  Museum,  and  the  lecture  given  thirty  years 
ago  on  iron-work  was  the  beginning  of  a  course  of  study  which  enabled 


I.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING  425 


pectators  at  small  account,  and  saying  of  Turner  "  you  ought 

0  like  him,"  and  of  Salvator,  "you  ought  not,"  etc.,  etc., 
nthout  in  the  least  considering  what  the  genius  or  instinct 
f  the  spectator  might  otherwise  demand,  or  approve.  But 

1  the  now  attempted  sketch  of  Christian  history,  I  have 
pproached  every  question  from  the  people's  side,  and  ex- 
mined  the  nature,  not  of  the  special  faculties  by  which 
le  work  was  produced,  but  of  the  general  instinct  by 
rhich  it  was  asked  for,  and  enjoyed.  Therefore  I  thought 
le  proper  heading  for  these  papers  should  represent  them 
s  descriptive  of  the  Pleasures  of  England,  rather  than  of 
s  Arts, 

9.  And  of  these  pleasures,  necessarily,  the  leading  one 
'as  that  of  Learning,  in  the  sense  of  receiving  instruction ; 
-a  pleasure  totally  separate  from  that  of  finding  out  things 
)r  yourself, — and  an  extremely  sweet  and  sacred  pleasure, 
rhen  you  know  how  to  seek  it,  and  receive. 

On  which  I  am  the  more  disposed,  and  even  compelled 
ere  to  insist,  because  your  modern  ideas  of  Development 
nply  that  you  must  all  turn  out  what  you  are  to  be,  and 
nd  out  what  you  are  to  know,  for  yourselves,  by  the 
levitable  operation  of  your  anterior  affinities  and  inner 
onsciences: — whereas  the  old  idea  of  education  was  that 
le  baby  material  of  you,  however  accidentally  or  inevitably 
orn,  was  at  least  to  be  by  external  force,  and  ancestral 
nowledge,  bred;  and  treated  by  its  Fathers  and  Tutors  as 
plastic  vase,  to  be  shaped  or  mannered  as  they  chose, 

me  by  one  section  of  it  to  place  before  you,  in  Aratra  Pentelici,  the  prin- 
ciples of  rise  and  decline  in  the  merit  of  Greek  coinage,  with  a  security 
which  you  will  find  no  subsequent  criticism  will  ever  be  able  to  controvert. 

"I' think  it  not  unbecoming,  or,  even  if  unbecoming,  nevertheless 
necessary,  to  assert  of  myself  thus  much,  because  in  this  habit  of  working 
long  at  'things  without  speaking  of  them,  I  have  left  the  system  of  my 
teaching  widely  scattered  and  broken,  hoping  always  to  bind  it  together 
some  day,  when  this  or  that  point  was  farther  investigated.     I  may, 
perhaps,  now  in  my  effort  to  accomplish  a  better  unity  appear  to  generalize 
too  boldly,  but  I  trust  to  your  own  future  work,  if  I  only  strike  my  out- 
lines clearly  enough,  for  the  modification  of  their  rudeness,  with  all  neces- 
sary detail  or  exception." 
3r  Ruskin's  study  of  the  illuminated  MSS.  in  the  British  Museum,  see  V  ol.  XII. 
Ixyiii.    In  the  same  volume  (pp.  474  seq.),  see  his  Lectures  on  Illumination.  For 
e  lecture  on  iron-work  (1858),  see  Two  Paths,  §§  140  seq.  (Vol.  XVI.  pp.  875  seq.).\ 


426        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


not  as  it  chose,  and  filled,  when  its  form  was  well  finished  ! 
and  baked,  with  sweetness  of  sound  doctrine,  as  with  Hybla' 
honey,  or  Arabian  spikenard.  i 

10.  Without  debating  how  far  these  two  modes  of  j 
acquiring  knowledge — finding   out,   and   being  told — may, 
severally  be  good,  and  in  perfect  instruction  combined,  1\ 
have  to  point  out  to  you  that,  broadly,  Athens,  Rome,  and| 
Florence  are  self-taught,  and  internally  developed;  while ij 
all  the  Gothic  races,  without  any  exception,  but  especially  j 
those   of  London   and    Paris,   are   afterwards  taught  by  j 
these ;  and  had,  therefore,  when  they  chose  to  accept  it,  1 
the  delight  of  being  instructed,  without  trouble  or  doubt, 
as  fast  as  they  could  read  or  imitate ;  and  brought  forward 
to  the  point  where  their  own   northern   instincts  might 
wholesomely  superimpose  or  graft  some  national  ideas  upon 
these  sound  instructions.    Read  over  what  I  said  on  this 
subject  in  the  third  of  my  lectures  last  year  (§  62  et  j 
seqq.),^  and  simplify  that  already  brief  statement  further,  by 
fastening  in  your  mind  Carlyle's  general  symbol  of  the 
best   attainments  of  northern  religious   sculpture, — "three 
whale-cubs  combined  by  boiling,"^  and  reflecting  that  the 
mental  history  of  all  northern  European  art  is  the  modi-  ,^ 
fication  of  that  graceful   type,  under  the  orders  of  the  I 
Athena  of  Homer  and  Phidias.  f 

11.  And  this  being  quite  indisputably  the  broad  fact  of 
the  matter,  I  greatly  marvel  that  your  historians  never,  so 
far  as  I  have  read,  think  of  proposing  to  you  the  question 
— what  you  might  have  made  of  yourselves  without  the 
help  of  Homer  and  Phidias :  what  sort  of  beings  the  Saxon 
and  the  Celt,  the  Frank  and  the  Dane,  might  have  been 
by  this  time,  untouched  by  the  spear  of  Pallas,  unruled  by 

^  [See  above,  pp.  808  seq.  In  the  lecture  as  reported  {Studies  in  Buskin, 
p.  216),  Ruskin  read  the  passages,  and  added  an  explanation  which  has  been  given 
above,  p.  309  7z.] 

2  [Friedrich,  Bk.  ii.  ch.  iii.  :  "  On  the  top  of  the  Harlungsberg  the  Wends  | 
set  up  (1023)  their  god  Triglaph  ;  a  three-headed  monster  of  which  I  have  seen  i 
prints,  beyond  measure  ugly.  Something  like  three  whales'  cubs  combined  by  t 
boiling,  or  a  triple  porpoise  dead-drunk."    See  above,  p.  367,  and  below,  p.  459.J  I 


1.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING  427 


fie  rod  of  Agricola,  and  sincerely  the  native  growth,  pure 
f  root,  and  ungrafted  in  fruit  of  the  clay  of  Isis,  rock  of 
)ovrefeIdt,^  and  sands  of  Elbe?  Think  of  it,  and  think 
hiefly  what  form  the  ideas,  and  images,  of  your  natural 
3ligion  might  probably  have  taken,  if  no  Roman  missionary 
ad  ever  passed  the  Alps  in  charity,  and  no  English  king 
1  pilgrimage. 

12.  1  have  been  of  late  indebted  more  than  I  can 
impress  to  the  friend  who  has  honoured  me  by  the  dedi- 
|ition  of  his  recently  published  lectures  on  Older  England;'^ 
lid  whose  eager  enthusiasm  and  far  collected  learning  have 
labled  me  for  the  first  time  to  assign  their  just  meaning 
id  value  to  the  ritual  and  imagery  of  Saxon  devotion, 
ut  while  every  page  of  Mr.  Hodgetts's  book,  and,  I  may 
■ratefuUy  say  also,  every  sentence  of  his  teaching,  has  in- 
reased  and  justified  the  respect  in  which  I  have  always 
een  by  my  own  feeling  disposed  to  hold  the  mythologies 
>unded  on  the  love  and  knowledge  of  the  natural  world ,^ 
have  also  been  led  by  them  to  conceive,  far  more  forcibly 
lan  hitherto,  the  power  which  the  story  of  Christianity 
3ssessed,  first  heard  through  the  wreaths  of  that  cloudy 
iperstition,  in  the  substitution  for  its  vaporescent  allegory 
■  a  positive  and  literal  account  of  a  real  Creation,  and 
1  instantly  present,  omnipresent,  and  compassionate  God.* 

Observe,  there  is  no  question  whatever  in  examin- 
g  this  influence,  how  far  Christianity  itself  is  true,  or 

1  [Compare  Vol.  XXVI.  p.  23.] 

^  [Older  England,  illustrated  hy  the  Anglo-Saxon  Antiquities  in  the  British  Museum 
I  a  Course  of  Six  Lectures,  by  J.  Frederick  Hodgetts,  Second  Series,  1884,  ^^aifec- 
•nately  dedicated"  to  Ruskin.  The  author  in  a  "Prefatory  Letter"  refers  to 
e  encouragement  he  received  from  Ruskin  in  his  studies.  Mr.  Hodgetts  had  in 
83  given  a  course  of  lectures  at  the  British  Museum  on  the  Anglo-Saxon  anti- 
jities.  Ruskin,  who  attended  the  first  lecture,  being  called  upon  to  make  some 
[Harks,  ^'  observed  that  Mr.  Hodgetts  had  overthrown  some  of  his  most  dearly- 
erished  ideas,  but  had  at  the  same  time  opened  a  new  world  of  light  and 
etry,  from  which  he  hoped  to  derive  much  benefit  and  pleasure.  He  had  con- 
rsed  on  two  or  three  occasions  with  Mr.  Hodgetts  on  the  Odinic  world,  in  which 
i  seemed  to  be  so  mucli  at  home,  and  he  had  begun  to  see  that  there  was  much 
I  the  glory  of  poetry  in  our  Saxon  myths,  which  we  had  much  neglected  and 
ight  to  know"  {Times,  November  20).] 

'  [See  Art  of  England,  §  43  (above,  p.  294).] 

*  [See  below,  §  91  (pp.  483-484).] 


428        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


the  transcendental  doctrines  of  it  intelligible.  Those 
brought  you  the  story  of  it  believed  it  with  all  their  sou 
to  be  true, — and  the  effect  of  it  on  the  hearts  of  yoij  I 
ancestors  was  that  of  an  unquestionable,  infinitely  luci  ^ 
message  straight  from  God,  doing  away  with  all  difiicu 
ties,  grief,  and  fears  for  those  who  willingly  received  i 
nor  by  any,  except  wilfully  and  obstinately  vile,  person 
to  be,  by  any  possibility,  denied  or  refused. 

13.  And  it  was  precisely,  observe,  the  vivacity  and  jo^^  it 
with  which  the  main  fact  of  Christ's  life  was  acceptc  ' 
which  gave  the  force  and  wrath  to  the  controversies  in- 
stantly arising  about  its  nature. 

Those  controversies  vexed  and  shook,  but  never  undei 
mined,  the  faith  they  strove  to  purify,  and  the  miraculou 
presence,  errorless  precept,  and  loving  promises  of  thei 
Lord  were  alike  undoubted,  alike  rejoiced  in,  by  everV 
nation  that  heard  the  word  of  Apostles.  The  Pelagian'i  i 
assertion  that  immortality  could  be  won  by  man's  will 
and  the  Arian's  that  Christ  possessed  no  more  than  man' 
nature,  never  for  an  instant — or  in  any  countr}^ — hindere( 
the  advance  of  the  moral  law  and  intellectual  hope  o 
Christianity.  Far  the  contrary ;  the  British  heresy  concern 
ing  Free  Will,^  though  it  brought  bishop  after  bishop  int( 
England  to  extinguish  it,  remained  an  extremely  healthj  ti 
and  active  element  in  the  British  mind  down  to  th( 
days  of  John  Bunyan  and  the  guide  Great  Heart,^  anc 
the  calmly  Christian  justice  and  simple  human  virtue  o 
Theodoric  were  the  very  roots  and  first  burgeons  of  th( 
regeneration  of  Italy. ^    But  of  the  degrees  in  which  it  wa^ 

Gibbon,  in  his   37th   chapter,  makes   Ulphilas  also  an   Arian,  bujj  H 
might  have  forborne,  with  grace,  his  own  definition  of  orthodoxy :  ^ — anc 
you  are  to  observe  generally  that  at  this  time  the  teachers  who  admittec,  a 

^  [For  the  three  heresies  here  mentioned,  compare  Candida  Cam,  §  8  n.  (above 
p.  210).]  " 
2  [Compare  above,  p.  42.]  ^  • 

2  [Ruskin  presumably  refers  to  the  definition  of  orthodoxy  implied  in  Gibbon's  t 
description  of  the  heresy  :     Whatever  might  be  the  early  sentiments  of  Ulphilas^ 
his  connections  with  the  Emi)ire  and  the  Church  were  formed  during  the  reign  oi 
Arianism.     The  apostle  of  the  Goths  subscribed  the  creed  of  Rimini ;  professed 


I.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING  429 


ossible  for  any  barbarous  nation  to  receive  during  the 
rst  five  centuries,  either  the  spiritual  power  of  Christianity 
:self,  or  the  instruction  in  classic  art  and  science  which 
ccompanied  it,  you  cannot  rightly  judge,  without  taking 
he  pains,  and  they  will  not,  I  think,  be  irksome,  of  notic- 
ig  carefully,  and  fixing  permanently  in  your  minds,  the 
aparating  characteristics  of  the  greater  races,  both  in  those 
ho  learned  and  those  who  taught. 

14.  Of  the  Huns  and  Vandals  we  need  not  speak, 
'hey  are  merely  forms  of  Punishment  and  Destruction,^ 
'ut  them  out  of  your  minds  altogether,  and  remember 
nly  the  names  of  the  immortal  nations,  which  abide  on 
leir  native  rocks,  and  plough  their  unconquered  plains,  at 
lis  hour.^ 

Briefly,  in  the  north, — Briton,  Norman,  Frank,  Saxon, 
)strogoth,  Lombard  ;  briefly,  in  the  south, — Tuscan,  Roman, 
rreek,  Syrian,  Egyptian,  Arabian. 

I  15.  Now  of  these  races,  the  British  (I  avoid  the  word 
Teltic,  because  you  would  expect  me  to  say  Keltic ;  and  I 
on't  mean  to,  lest  you  should  be  wanting  me  next  to  call 
le  patroness  of  music  St.  Kekilia),  the  British,  including 
jlreton,  Cornish,  Welsh,  Irish,  Scot,  and  Pict,  are,  I  believe, 
f  all  the  northern  races,  the  one  which  has  deepest  love 
f  external  nature; — and  the  richest  inherent  gift  of  pure 

le  inferiority  of  Christ  to  the  P'ather  as  touching  his  Manhood,  were 
ften  counted  among  Arians,  but  quite  falsely.  Christ's  own  words,  ''My 
ather  is  greater  than  I,"  ^  end  that  controversy  at  once.  Arianism  con- 
sts  not  in  asserting  the  subjection  of  the  Son  to  the  Father,  but  in 
enying  the  subjected  Divinity. 


ith  freedom,  and  perhaps  with  sincerity,  that  the  Son  was  not  equal,  or  cousub- 
cautial  to  the  Father  ;  communicated  these  errors  to  the  clergy  and  people ;  and 
ifected  the  Barbaric  world  with  heresy."  Ruskin's  account  of  Arianism  is  hardly 
onsistent  with  the  epistles  of  Arius  himself.  Readers  unfamiliar  with  the  subject 
lay  be  referred  to  the  chapters  on  the  Council  of  Nic»a  in  Dean  Stanley 's  Xt^c- 
ires  on  the  History  of  the  Eastern  Church.  For  an  interesting  discussion  of  the 
easons  which  may  have  inclined  Theodoric  and  the  other  Barbarian  invaders  to 
i^rianism,  see  T.  Hodgkin's  Theodoric^  p.  178.] 

1  [Compare  Grown  of  Wild  Olive,  §  9o  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  464).] 
[Compare  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  456.] 

3  [Matthew  xiv.  28.] 


430        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

music  and  song,  as  such;  separated  from  the  intellectuj 
gift  which  raises  song  into  poetry.  They  are  naturally  als 
religious,  and  for  some  centuries  after  their  own  conversio 
are  one  of  the  chief  evangelizing  powers  in  Christendoir 
But  they  are  neither  apprehensive  nor  receptive ; — the 
cannot  understand  the  classic  races,  and  learn  scarcely  any 
thing  from  them ;  perhaps  better  so,  if  the  classic  races  hm 
been  more  careful  to  understand  them, 

16.  Next,  the  Norman  is  scarcely  more  apprehensiv< 
than  the  Celt,  but  he  is  more  constructive,  and  uses  U 
good  advantage  what  he  learns  from  the  Frank.  His  maiij 
characteristic  is  an  energy,  which  never  exhausts  itself  ii; 
vain  anger,  desire,  or  sorrow,  but  abides  and  rules,  like 
living  rock : — where  he  wanders,  he  flows  like  lava,  an( 
congeals  like  granite. 

17.  Next,  I  take  in  this  first  sketch  the  Saxon  anc| 
Frank  together,  both  pre-eminently  apprehensive,  both  dociltj 
exceedingly,  imaginative  in  the  highest,  but  in  life  active 
more  than  pensive,  eager  in  desire,  swift  of  invention 
keenly  sensitive  to  animal  beauty,  but  with  difficulty 
rational,  and  rarely,  for  the  future,  wise.  Under  the  con-ij 
elusive  name  of  Ostrogoth,  you  may  class  whatever  tribe^ 
are  native  to  central  Germany,  and  develop  themselves,  a^l 
time  goes  on,  into  that  power  of  the  German  Csesars  whicK 
still  asserts  itself  as  an  empire  against  the  licence  and 
insolence  of  modern  republicanism, — of  which  races,  thougl^ 
this  general  name,  no  description  can  be  given  in  rapid 
terms. 

18.  And  lastly,  the  Lombards,  who,  at  the  time 
have  to  deal  with,  were  sternly  indocile,  gloomily  imagi-l 
native, — of  almost  Norman  energy,  and  differing  from  all 
the  other  western  nations  chiefly  in  this  notable  parti-l 
cular,  that  while  the  Celt  is  capable  of  bright  wit  and 
happy  play,  and  the  Norman,  Saxon,  and  Frank  all  alike 
delight  in  caricature,  the  Lombards,  like  the  Arabians,! 
never  jest. 

19.  These,  briefly,  are  the  six  barbaric  nations  who  are. 


I.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING  431 


0  be  taught :  and  of  whose  native  arts  and  faculties,  before 
hey  receive  any  tutorship  from  the  south,  I  find  no  well- 
iffced  account  in  any  history:— but  thus  much  of  them, 
oUecting  your  own  thoughts  and  knowledge,  you  may 
asily  discern— they  were  all,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Icots,  practical  workers  and  builders  in  wood;  and  those 
f  them  who  had  coasts,  first-rate  sea-boat  builders,^  with 
ine  mathematical  instincts  and  practice  in  that  kind  far 
eveloped,  necessarily  good  sail-weaving,  and  sound  fur- 
titching,  with  stout  ironwork  of  nail  and  rivet ;  rich  copper 
nd  some  silver  work  in  decoration — the  Celts  developing 
eculiar  gifts  in  linear  design,  but  wholly  incapable  of 
rawing  animals  or  figures ; — the  Saxons  and  Franks  having 
nough  capacity  in  that  kind,  but  no  thought  of  attempting 
the  Normans  and  Lombards  still  farther  remote  from 
ny  such  skill.  More  and  more,  it  seems  to  me  wonderful 
hat  under  your  British  block-temple,  grimly  extant  on  its 
astoral  plain,  or  beside  the  first  crosses  engraved  on  the 
ock  of  Whithorn — you  English  and  Scots  do  not  oftener 
onsider  what  you  might  or  could  have  come  to,  left  to 
ourselves. 

20.  Next,  let  us  form  the  list  of  your  tutor  nations,  in 
;rhom  it  generally  pleases  you  to  look  at  nothing  but  the 
orruptions.  If  we  could  get  into  the  habit  of  thinking 
lore  of  our  own  corruptions  and  more  of  theii^  virtues,  we 
hould  have  a  better  chance  of  learning  the  true  laws  alike 
f  art  and  destiny.  But  the  safest  way  of  all  is  to  assure 
urselves  that  true  knowledge  of  any  thing  or  any  creature 
5  only  of  the  good  of  it ;  ^  that  its  nature  and  life  are  in 
hat,  and  that  what  is  diseased, — that  is  to  say,  unnatural 
nd  mortal, — you  must  cut  away  from  it  in  contemplation, 
s  you  would  in  surgery. 

Of  the  six  tutor  nations,  two,  the  Tuscan  and  Arab, 
lave  no  effect  on  early  Christian  England.  But  the  Roman, 
ireek,  Syrian,  and  Egyptian  act  together  from  the  earliest 

1  [Compare  Candida  Casa^  §  18  (above,  p.  217).] 

2  [Compare  the  Preface  to  Bible  of  Amiens;  above,  p.  24.] 


432        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


times;  you  are  to  study  the  influence  of  Rome  upon  Eiig 
land  in  Agricola,  Constantius,  St.  Benedict,  and  St.  Gregory]  1 
of  Greece  upon  England  in  the  artists  of  Byzantium  am  j 
Ravenna ;  of  Syria  and  Egypt  upon  England  in  St.  Jerome  ;i 
St.  Augustine,  St.  Chrysostom,  and  St.  Athanase. 

21.  St.  Jerome,  in  central  Bethlehem;  St.  August  I 
tine,  Carthaginian  by  birth,  in  truth  a  converted  Tyriani  u 
Athanase,  Egyptian,  symmetric  and  fixed  as  an  Egyptian  i 
aisle ;  Chrysostom,  golden  mouth  of  all ;  these  are,  indeed  i 
every  one  teachers  of  all  the  western  world,  but  St!  \ 
Augustine  especially  of  lay,  as  distinguished  from  monastic]  i 
Christianity  to  the  Franks,  and  finally  to  us.  His  rule)  t 
expanded  into  the  treatise  of  the  City  of  God,  is  taker|  i 
for  guide  of  life  and  policy  by  Charlemagne,  and  becomesj  j 
certainly  the  fountain  of  Evangelical  Christianity,  distinci  i 
tively  so  called,  (and  broadly  the  lay  Christianity  of  EuropeJ 
since,  in  the  purest  form  of  it,  that  is  to  say,  the  most;  j 
merciful,  charitable,  variously  applicable,  kindly  wise.)  The 
greatest  type  of  it,  as  far  as  I  know,  is  St.  Martin  oil  i 
Tours,  whose  character  is  sketched,  I  think  in  the  maiiJ  | 
rightly,  in  The  Bible  of  A  miens  ;^  and  you  may  bind  togethetj  f 
your  thoughts  of  its  course  by  remembering  that  AlcuinI  j 
born  at  York,  dies  in  the  Abbey  of  St.  Martin,  at  Tours; 
that  as  St.  Augustine  was  in  his  writings  Charlemagne's  n 
Evangelist  in  faith,  Alcuin  was,  in  living  presence,  hi^ 
master  in  rhetoric,  logic,  and  astronomy,  with  the  other)  „ 
physical  sciences. 

22.  A  hundred  years  later  than  St.  Augustine,  comesj 
the  rule  of  St.  Benedict — the  Monastic  rule,  virtually,  ofj  \ 
European  Christianity,  ever  since — and  theologically  thei; 
Law  of  Works,  as  distinguished  from  the  Law  of  Faith. 
St.  Augustine  and  all  the  disciples  of  St.  Augustine  tell 
Christians  what  they  should  feel  and  think:  St.  Benedict 
and  all  the  disciples  of  St.  Benedict  tell  Christians  what 
they  should  say  and  do. 

In  the  briefest,  but  also  the  perfectest  distinction,  thCj  : 

1  [See  above,  pp.  40-46.] 


I.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING  433 


iscipies  of  St.  Augustine  are  those  who  open  the  door  to 
hrist — "If  any  man  hear  my  voice";  but  the  Benedic- 
jnes  those  to  whom  Christ  opens  the  door — "To  him  that 
nocketh  it  shall  be  opened."^ 

23.  Now,  note  broadly  the  course  and  action  of  this 
ale,  as  it  combines  with  the  older  one.  St.  Augustine's, 
pcepted  heartily  by  Clovis,  and,  with  various  degrees  of 
nderstanding,  by  the  kings  and  queens  of  the  Merovingian 
ynasty,  makes  seemingly  little  difference  in  their  conduct, 
3  that  their  profession  of  it  remains  a  scandal  to  Chris- 
anity  to  this  day ;  and  yet  it  lives,  in  the  true  hearts 
oiong  them,  down  from  St.  Clotilde  to  her  great  grand- 
aughter  Bertha,  who  in  becoming  Queen  of  Kent,  builds 
nder  its  chalk  downs  her  own  little  chapel  to  St.  Martin,^ 
ad  is  the  first  effectively  and  permanently  useful  missionary 
1  the  Saxons,  the  beginner  of  English  Erudition,^ — the 
rst  laid  corner  stone  of  beautiful  English  character. 

24.  I  think  henceforward  you  will  find  the  memorandum 
f  dates  which  I  have  here  set  down  for  my  own  guidance 
lore  simply  useful  than  those  confused  by  record  of  unim- 
ortant  persons  and  inconsequent  events,  which  form  the 
idices  of  common  history. 

From  the  year  of  the  Saxon  invasion  449,  there  are 
xactly  400  years  to  the  birth  of  Alfred,  849.  You  have 
0  difficulty  in  remembering  those  cardinal  years.  Then, 
ou  have  Four  great  men  and  great  events  to  remember, 
t  the  close  of  the  fifth  century.  Clovis,  and  the  founding 
f  Frank  Kingdom;  Theodoric  and  the  founding  of  the 
xothic  Kingdom ;  Justinian  and  the  founding  of  Civil  law ; 
It.  Benedict  and  the  founding  of  Religious  law. 

25.  Of  Justinian,  and  his  work,  I  am  not  able  myself 
0  form  any  opinion— and  it  is,  I  think,  unnecessary  for 
tudents  of  history  to  form  any,  until  they  are  able  to 

^  [Revelation  iii.  20 ;  Matthew  vii.  8.]  ti  i       v  • 

2  [See  Stanley's  Historical  Memorials  of  Canterbury,  1855,  p.  14.  Bede,  who  is 
!he  authority  on  the  subject,  does  not  say,  however,  that  Bei-tha  built  her  own 
ttle  chapel,  but  that  a  little  chapel  already  existing  from  Roman  times  was  given 
)r  her  usa.'j 

3  [See  above,  p.  202.] 


434        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

estimate  clearly  the  benefits,  and  mischief,  of  the  civil  laMj  i| 

of  Europe  in  its  present  state.  But  to  Clovis,  Theodorici  ^ 
and  St.  Benedict,  without  any  question,  we  owe  more  thar 

any  English  historian  has  yet  ascribed, — and  they  are  easil}  i 

held  in  mind  together,  for  Clovis  ascended  the  Frank  throne  t 

in  the  year  of  St.  Benedict's  birth,  481.    Theodoric  fought  t 

the  battle  of  Verona,  and  founded  the  Ostrogothic  Kingdom'  i 
in  Italy  twelve  years  later,  in  493,  and  thereupon  married! 

the  sister  of  Clovis.^    That  marriage  is  always  passed  in  a  $ 

casual  sentence,  as  if  a  merely  political  one,  and  while  page  t 
after  page  is  spent  in  following  the  alternations  of  furious 
crime  and  fatal  chance,  in  the  contests  between  Fredegonde 
and   Brunehaut,  no  historian  ever  considers  whether  the 

great  Ostrogoth  who  wore  in  the  battle  of  Verona  the!  -v 

dress  which  his  mother  had  woven  for  him,^  was  likely  toi  ' 

have  chosen  a  wife  without  love ! — or  how  far  the  per-  ^ 

fectness,  justice,  and  temperate  wisdom  of  every  ordinance j  «" 

of  his  reign  was  owing  to  the  sympathy  and  counsel  oft  " 
his  Frankish  queen.  ^ 

26.  You  have  to  recollect,  then,  thus  far,  only  three  j  i 
cardinal  dates : — 

449.  Saxon  invasion. 

481.  Clovis  reigns  and  St.  Benedict  is  born. 
493.  Theodoric  conquers  at  Verona. 

Then,  roughly,  a  hundred  years  later,  in  590,  Ethelbert,  n 

the  fifth  from  Hengist,  and  Bertha,  the  third  from  Clotilde,  f 

are  king  and  queen  of  Kent.    I  cannot  find  the  date  of  t 

their  marriage,  but  the  date,  590,  which  you  must  recollect  j 

for  cardinal,  is  that  of  Gregory's  accession  to  the  pontifi-  n 

cate,  and  I  believe  Bertha  was  then  in  middle  life,  having  i 

persevered  in  her  religion  firmly,  but  inoffensively,  and  o 

made  herself  beloved  by  her  husband  and  people.    She,  in  i 

1  [This  is  the  historical  conjunction  which  Ruskin  describes  in  The  Bible  oj 
Amiens,  ch.  ii.  §  54  (above,  pp.  84-85).] 

2  [See  again  Bible  of  Amiens  (above,  p.  85).] 

^  [For  the  silence  of  contemporary  authorities  on  Angofleda  (or  Albofleda,  above, 
p.  81),  wife  of  Theodoric,  see  Hodg-kin's  Theodoric,  pp.  188,  189.] 


1.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING  435 


i^ngland,  Theodolinda  in  Lombardy,  and  St.  Gregory  in 
:lome : — in  their  hands  virtually  lay  the  destiny  of  Europe. 

Then  the  period  from  Bertha  to  Osburga,  590  to  849 — 
ay  250  years — is  passed  by  the  Saxon  people  in  the  daily 
nore  reverent  learning  of  the  Christian  faith,  and  daily 
nore  peaceful  and  skilful  practice  of  the  humane  arts  and 
luties  which  it  invented  and  inculcated. 

27.  The  statement  given  by  Sir  Edward  Creasy  of  the 
esult  of  these  250  years  of  lesson  is,  with  one  correction, 
[he  most  simple  and  just  that  I  can  find : — 

"A  few  years  before  the  close  of  the  sixth  century,  the  country  was 
ttle  more  than  a  wide  battle-field,  where  gallant  but  rude  warriors  fought 
nth.  each  other,  or  against  the  neighbouring  Welsh  or  Scots ;  unheed- 
ag  and  unheeded  by  the  rest  of  Europe,  or,  if  they  attracted  casual 
ttention,  regarded  with  dread  and  disgust  as  the  fiercest  of  barbarians 
nd  the  most  untameable  of  pagans.  In  the  eighth  century,  England  was 
3oked  up  to  with  admiration  and  gratitude,  as  superior  to  all  the  other 
ountries  of  Western  Europe  in  piety  and  learning,  and  as  the  land 
whence  the  most  zealous  and  successful  saints  and  teachers  came  forth  to 
onvert  and  enlighten  the  still  barbarous  regions  of  the  continent."  i 

28.  This  statement  is  broadly  true;  yet  the  correction 
t  needs  is  a  very  important  one.  England, — under  her  first 
ilfred  of  Northumberland,  and  under  Ina  of  Wessex,  is 
Indeed  during  these  centuries  the  most  learned,  thoughtful, 
nd  progressive  of  European  states.  But  she  is  not  a  mis- 
ionary  power.  The  missionaries  are  always  to  her,  not 
rom  her: — for  the  very  reason  that  she  is  learning  so 
eagerly,  she  does  not  take  to  preaching.  Ina  founds  his 
5axon  school  at  Rome  not  to  teach  Rome,  nor  convert 
-he  Pope,  but  to  drink  at  the  source  of  knowledge,  and  to 
eceive  laws  from  direct  and  unquestioned  authority,^  The 
jnissionary  power  was  wholly  Scotch  and  Irish,^  and  that 
)ower  was  wholly  one  of  zeal  and  faith,  not  of  learning. 

will  ask  you,  in  the  course  of  my  next  lecture,  to  regard 

^  [^History  of  England,  eh.  iii.  ;  vol.  i.  jjp.  113-114.] 

2  [For  Ina's  abdication,  and  retirement  to  Rome,  etc.,  see  Sharon  Turner's  Anglo- 
saxons,  Bk.  iii.  cli.  ix.  (vol.  ii.  pp.  398-399).] 

2  [Compare  Ruskin's  mapping  out  of  an  leniic  period "  in  Candida  Casa,  §  5 
above,  p.  207).] 


436        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


it  attentively;^  to-day,  I  must  rapidly  draw  to  the  conclu 
sions  I  would  leave  with  you. 

29.  It  is  more  and  more  wonderful  to  me  as  I  think  o 
it,  that  no  effect  whatever  was  produced  on  the  Saxon,  noii  . 
on  any  other  healthy  race  of  the  North,  either  by  th^ 
luxury  of  Rome,  or  by  her  art,  whether  constructive  ors 
imitative.     The   Saxon   builds  no  aqueducts — designs  no] 
roads,  rounds  no  theatres  in  imitation  of  her, — envies  none 
of  her  vile  pleasures, — admires,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  none 
of  her  far-carried  realistic  art.     I  suppose  that  it  needs! 
intelligence  of  a  more  advanced  kind  to  see  the  qualitiesj 
of  complete   sculpture :   and  that  we  may  think  of  the- 
Northern  intellect  as  still  like  that  of  a  child,  who  cares  toi 
picture  its  own  thoughts  in  its  own  way,  but  does  not  care 
for  the  thoughts  of  older  people,  or  attempt  to  copy  what  I 
it  feels  too  difficult.    This  much  at  least  is  certain,  thatj 
for  one  cause  or  another,  everything  that  now  at  Paris  orj 
London  our  painters  most  care  for  and  try  to  realize  of 
ancient  Rome,  was  utterly  innocuous  and  unattractive  toj 
the  Saxon:  while  his  mind  was  frankly  open  to  the  direct | 
teaching  of  Greece  and  to  the  methods  of  bright  decoration 
employed  in  the  Byzantine  Empire:  for  these  alone  seemed 
to  his  fancy  suggestive  of  the  glories  of  the  brighter  world  j 
promised  by  Christianity.     Jewellery,  vessels  of  gold  and  j 
silver,  beautifully  written  books,  and  music,  are  the  gifts  of  ^ 
St.  Gregory  alike  to  the  Saxon  and  Lombard ;  ^  all  these 
beautiful  things  being  used,  not  for  the  pleasure  of  the 
present  life,  but  as  the  symbols  of  another ;  while  the  draw- 
ings in  Saxon  manuscripts,  in  which,  better  than  in  any 
other  remains  of  their  life,  we  can  read  the  people's  char- 
acter, are  rapid  endeavours  to  express  for  themselves,  and 
convey  to  others,  some  likeness  of  the  realities  of  sacred 
event  in  which  they  had  been  instructed.    They  differ  from 
every  archaic  school  of  former  design  in  this  evident  corre- 
spondence with  an  imagined  reality.    All  previous  archaic 

*  [See  below,  p.  439.]  ' 
'  [Compare  Ruskiii's      Notes  on  the  Priest's  Office"  in  Roadside  Songs  of 
Tuscany,  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  i21.] 


I.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  LEARNING  437 


rt  whatsoever  is  symbolic  and  decorative — not  realistic, 
rhe  contest  of  Herakles  with  the  Hydra  on  a  Greek  vase 
k  a  mere  sign  that  such  a  contest  took  place,  not  a  pic- 
ure  of  it,  and  in  drawing  that  sign  the  potter  is  always 
|hinking  of  the  effect  of  the  engraved  lines  on  the  curves 
)f  his  pot,  and  taking  care  to  keep  out  of  the  way  of 
he  handle; — but  a  Saxon  monk  would  scratch  his  idea 
f  the  Fall  of  the  Angels  or  the  Temptation  of  Christ 
|ver  a  whole  page  of  his  manuscript  in  variously  explana- 
ory  scenes,  evidently  full  of  inexpressible  vision,  and  eager 
0  explain  and  illustrate  all  that  he  felt  or  believed. 

30.  Of  the  progress  and  arrest  of  these  gifts,  I  shall 
lave  to  speak  in  my  next  address ;  ^  but  I  must  regretfully 
onclude  to-day  with  some  brief  warning  against  the  com- 
jjacency  which  might  lead  you  to  regard  them  as  either  at 
hat  time  entirely  original  in  the  Saxon  race,  or  at  the 
iresent  day  as  signally  characteristic  of  it.  That  form  of 
omplacency  is  exhibited  in  its  most  amiable  but,  therefore, 
Qost  deceptive  guise,  in  the  passage  with  which  the  late 
3ean  of  Westminster  concluded  his  lecture  at  Canterbury 
a  April  1854,  on  the  subject  of  the  landing  of  Augustine.^ 

31.  I  will  not  spoil  the  emphasis  of  the  passage  by 
omment  as  I  read,  but  must  take  leave  afterwards  to 
Qtimate  some  grounds  for  abatement  in  the  fervour  of  its 
elf-gratulatory  ecstasy 

"Let  any  one  sit  on  the  hill  of  the  little  church  of  St.  Martin,  and 
3ok  on  the  view  which  is  there  spread  before  his  eyes.  Immediately 
>elow  are  the  towers  of  the  great  abbey  of  St.  Augustine,  where  Christian 
learning  and  civilization  first  struck  root  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  race;  and 
/ithin  which  now,  after  a  lapse  of  many  centuries,  a  new  institution  has 
risen,  intended  to  carry  far  and  wide,  to  countries  of  which  Gregory  and 
i-Ugustine  never  heard,  the  blessings  which  they  gave  to  us.  Carry  your 
lew  on — and  there  rises  high  above  all  the  magnificent  pile  of  our 
athedral,  equal  in  splendour  and  state  to  any,  the  noblest  temple  or 
hurch  that  Augustine  could  have  seen  in  ancient  Rome,  rising  on  the 
ery  ground  which  derives  its  consecration  from  him.  And  still  more 
han  the  grandeur  of  the  outward  buildings  that  rose   from  the  little 

^  [See  below,  pp.  441  seq.] 

2  [Historical  Memorials  of  Canterhury,  1856:  "The  Landing  of  Augustine," 
'p.  34-35.] 


438        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


church  of  Augustine  and  the  little  palace  of  Ethelbert  have  been  the 
institutions  of  all  kinds  of  which  these  were  the  earliest  cradle.  From 
Canterbury;,  the  first  English  Christian  city, — from  Kent,  the  first  English 
Christian  kingdom — has  by  degrees  arisen  the  whole  constitution  of  Church  ^ 
and  State  in  England  which  now  binds  together  the  whole  British  Empire.  [ 
And  from  the  Christianity  here  established  in  England  has  flowed,  by  \ 
direct  consequence,  first  the  Christianity  of  Germany ;  then,  after  a  long 
interval,  of  North  America ;  and  lastly,  we  may  trust,  in  time,  of  all  India  \ 
and  all  Australasia.    The  view  from  St.  Martin's  Church  is  indeed  one  of 
the  most  inspiriting  that  can  be  found  in  the  world ;  there  is  none  to 
which  I  would  more  willingly  take  any  one  who  doubted  whether  a  small 
beginning  could  lead  to  a  great  and  lasting  good  ; — none  which  carries 
us  more  vividly  back  into  the  past,  or  more  hopefully  forward  into  the 
future." 

32.  To  this  Gregorian  canticle  in  praise  of  the  British 
constitution,  I  grieve,  but  am  compelled,  to  take  these  ^ 
following  historical  objections.  The  first  missionary  to  Ger-  « 
many  was  Ulphilas,  and  what  she  owes  to  these  islands  she  » 
owes  to  lona,  not  to  Thanet.  Our  missionary  offices  to  i 
America  as  to  Africa  consist,  I  believe,  principally  in  the  « 
stealing  of  land,  and  the  extermination  of  its  proprietors  i 
by  intoxication.  Our  rule  in  India  has  introduced  there, 
Paisley  instead  of  Cashmere  shawls :  in  Australasia  our  i 
Christian  aid  supplies,  I  suppose,  the  pious  farmer  with  i 
convict  labour.  And  although,  when  the  Dean  wrote  the  n 
above  passage,  St.  Augustine's  and  the  cathedral  were — I  i 
take  it  on  trust  from  his  description — the  principal  objects  I 
in  the  prospect  from  St.  Martin's  Hill,  I  believe  even  i 
the  cheerfullest  of  my  audience  would  not  now  think  the  i 
scene  one  of  the  most  inspiriting  in  the  world.  For  recent  \ 
progress  has  entirely  accommodated  the  architecture  of  the  i 
scene  to  the  convenience  of  the  missionary  workers  above  1 
enumerated  ;  to  the  peculiar  necessities  of  the  civilization  i 
they  have  achieved.  For  the  sake  of  which  the  cathedral,  I 
the  monastery,  the  temple,  and  the  tomb,  of  Bertha,  con- 
tract themselves  in  distant  or  despised  subservience  under 
the  colossal  walls  of  the  county  gaol.^ 

,  1 

^  [For  a  few  remarks,  added  by  Ruskin  after  this  lecture,  see  above,  p.  284  w.J 


I 


LECTURE  II 
THE   PLEASURES   OF  FAITH 
ALFRED  TO  THE  CONFESSOR 

(Delivered  25th  and  9.1th  October  1884) 

^8.  I  WAS  forced  in  my  last  lecture  to  pass  by  altogether, 
md  to-day  can  only  with  momentary  definition  notice,  the 
jart  taken  by  Scottish  missionaries  in  the  Christianizing  of 
*5ngland  and  Burgundy.  I  would  pray  you  therefore,  in 
3rder  to  fill  the  gap  which  I  think  it  better  to  leave  dis- 
tinctly, than  close  confusedly,  to  read  the  histories  of  St. 
Patrick,  St.  Columba,  and  St.  Col um ban,  as  they  are  given 
^o\x  by  Montalembert  in  his  Moines  d'Occident.  You  will 
ind  in  his  pages  all  the  essential  facts  that  are  known  ,^ 
encircled  with  a  nimbus  of  enthusiastic  sympathy  which 
[  hope  you  will  like  better  to  see  them  through,  than 
distorted  by  the  blackening  fog  of  contemptuous  ration- 
alism.^ But  although  I  ask  you  thus  to  make  yourselves 
iware  of  the  greatness  of  my  omission,  I  must  also  certify 
you  that  it  does  not  break  the  unity  of  our  own  immediate 
jsubject.  The  influence  of  Celtic  passion  and  art  both  on 
iNorthumbria  and  the  Continent,  beneficent  in  all  respects 
jwhile  it  lasted,  expired  without  any  permanent  share  in 
the  work  or  emotion  of  the  Saxon  and  Frank.    The  book 

^  [In  the  first  proof,  the  passage  continued  : — 

.  .  known,  related  with  an  enthusiasm  partly  poetic,  partly  infan- 
tine—in both  characters  pardonable,  I  hope,  by  those  who  know  that 
poetry  does  not  necessarily  mean  falsehood,  nor  infancy  ignorance  of 
heaven.    But  although  .  .  ." 
Ruskin  refers  to  this  passage  lower  down  (p.  451),  forgetting  that  he  had  struck  it 
out  on  revise.] 

2  [For  another  appreciation  of  Montalembert,  see  above,  p.  202.] 


440        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND  i 

of  Kells,  and  the  bell  of  St.  Patrick,^  represent  sufficientl 
the  peculiar  character  of  Celtic  design  ;  and  long  since,  ii 
the  first  lecture  of  The  Two  Paths,  I  explained  both  th» 
modes  of  skill,  and  points  of  weakness,  which  rendered  sucl 
design  unprogressive.^    Perfect  in  its  peculiar  manner,  anci 
exulting  in  the  faultless  practice  of  a  narrow  skill,  it  re 
mained   century   after   century  incapable   alike   of  innei 
growth,  or  foreign  instruction;  inimitable,  yet  incorrigible 
marvellous,  yet   despicable,  to   its   death.     Despicable,  I 
mean,  only  in  the  limitation  of  its   capacity,  not  in  its 
quality  or  nature.    If  you  make  a  Christian  of  a  lamb  or 
a  squirrel — what  can  you  expect  of  the  lamb  but  jumping 
— what  of  the  squirrel,  but  pretty  spirals,  traced  with  his 
tail  ?    He  won't  steal  your  nuts  any  more,  and  he'll  say 
his  prayers  like  this — ^  ;  but  you  cannot  make  a  Beatrice's 
griffin,  and  emblem  of  all  the  Catholic  Church,^  out  of  him. 

34.  You  will  have  observed,  also,  that  the  plan  of  these 
lectures  does  not  include  any  reference  to  the  Roman  Period 
in  England ;  of  which  you  will  find  all  I  think  necessary  to 
say,  in  the  part  called  ^"alle  Crucis  "  of  Our  Fathers  have 
Told  Us^  But  I  must  here  warn  you,  with  reference  to  it, 
of  one  gravely  false  prejudice  of  Montalembert.^  He  is 
entirely  blind  to  the  conditions  of  Roman  virtue,  which 
existed  in  the  midst  of  the  corruptions  of  the  Empire, 
forming  the  characters  of  such  Emperors  as  Pertinax,  Carus, 
Probus,  the  second  Claudius,  Aurelian,  and  our  own  Con- 
stantius ;  and  he  denies,  with  abusive  violence,  the  power 
for  good,  of  Roman  Law,  over  the  Gauls  and  Britons. 

35.  Respecting  Roman  national  character,  I  will  simply 

*  Making  a  sign. 


*  [For  other  references  to  the  Book  of  Kells  (Trinitv  College,  Dublin),  see 
Vol.  XIX.  p.  258,  Vol.  XXI.  p.  50  n.,  and  Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  559;  the  Bell  of 
St.  Patrick,  the  oldest  relic  ol  Christian  metal  work  in  Ireland,  preserved  for 
centuries  in  Armagh,  is  now  in  the  National  Museum  in  Dublin.] 

2  [See  Voh  XVI.  pp.  274  seq.,  and  compare  Vol.  XVIII.  pp.  171-172  n.] 
^  [For  the  griffin  in  the  mystical  procession  in  the  Terrestrial  Paradise  (sym- 
bolical of  Christ,  the  twofold  nature  of  the  griffin,  half  lion,  half  eag-le,  repre- 
senting the  twofold  nature  of  Christ),  see  Purgatorio,  xxix.  108,  etc.] 

*  rin  the  chapter  entitled  "Candida  Casa,"  §§  9-16:  see  above,  pp.  210-217-] 
^  [Here  compare,  above,  p.  202.] 


11.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH  441 


beg  you  to  remember,  that  both  St.  Benedict  and  St. 
Gregory  are  Roman  patricians,  before  they  are  either  monk 
or  pope;  respecting  its  influence  on  Britain,  I  think  you 
may  rest  content  with  Shakespeare's  estimate  of  it.  Both 
Lear  and  CymbeUne  belong  to  this  time,  so  difficult  to 
our  apprehension,  when  the  Briton  accepted  both  Roman 
laws  and  Roman  gods.  There  is  indeed  the  born  Kentish 
gentleman's  protest  against  them  in  Kent's— 

"Now,  by  Apollo,  king. 
Thou  swear'st  thy  gods  in  vain ; "  ^ 

but  both  Cordelia  and  Imogen  are  just  as  thoroughly 
Roman  ladies,  as  Virgilia  or  Calphurnia.^ 

86.  Of  British  Christianity  and  the  Arthurian  Legends, 
I  shall  have  a  word  or  two  to  say  in  my  lecture  on 
Fancy,"  in  connection  with  the  similar  romance  which 
surrounds  Theodoric  and  Charlemagne :  ^  only  the  worst  of 
it  is,  that  while  both  Dietrich  and  Karl  are  themselves 
more  wonderful  than  the  legends  of  them,  Arthur  fades 
into  intangible  vision : — this  much,  however,  remains  to  this 
day,  of  Arthurian  blood  in  us,  that  the  richest  fighting 
element  in  the  British  army  and  navy  is  British  native, — 
ithat  is  to  say,  Highlander,  Irish,  Welsh,  and  Cornish. 

37.  Content,  therefore  (means  being  now  given  you  for 
filling  gaps,)  with  the  estimates  given  you  in  the  preceding 
ilecture  of  the  sources  of  instruction  possessed  by  the  Saxon 
capital,  I  pursue  to-day  our  question  originally  proposed,* 
I'what  London  might  have  been  by  this  time,  if  the  nature 
iof  the  flowers,  trees,  and  children,  born  at  the  Thames-side, 
had  been  rightly  understood  and  cultivated. 

1  [Act  i.  sc.  1.] 

2  [For  Cordelia  and  Imogen— Roman  ladies,  and  "the  standard  of  honour  to 
British  maid  and  wife"— see  "Candida  Casa,"  §  8  (above,  p.  209).  For  other  refer- 
ences to  Virgilia,  see  Vol.  XIV.  p.  10,  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  113,  Vol.  XIX.  p.  102  ; 
for  Ruskin's  study  of  Coriolaniis  and  Julius  Cctmr,  see  Pretterita,  ii.  §  133.] 

2  [This,  however,  was  not  done,  though  there  is  a  passing  reference  to  the 
legends  of  Arthur  in  §  66.  A  full  account  of  the  romance  of  Theodoric  ("Dietrich 
of  Bern,"  see  Vol.  XIX.  p.  433)  may  be  read  in  ch.  xix.  ("The  Theodoric  of 
Saga")  of  T.  Hodgkiii's  Theodoric  the  Goth.] 

4  [See  §  5  ;  above,  p.  423.] 


442        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


38.  IVIany  of  my  hearers  can  imagine  far  better  than 
I,  the  look  that  London  must  have  had  in  Alfred's  and 
Canute's  days.^  I  have  not,  indeed,  the  least  idea  myself  ! 
what  its  buildings  were  like,  but  certainly  the  groups  of ! 
its  shipping  must  have  been  superb ;  small,  but  entirely  I 
seaworthy  vessels,  manned  by  the  best  seamen  in  the  then 
world.  Of  course,  now,  at  Chatham  and  Portsmouth  we 
have  our  ironclads, — extremely  beautiful  and  beautifully 
manageable  things,  no  doubt — to  set  against  this  Saxon 
and  Danish  shipping;  but  the  Saxon  war-ships  lay  here  at 
London  shore — bright  with  banner  and  shield  and  dragon 
prow, — instead  of  these  you  may  be  happier,  but  are  not 
handsomer,  in  having,  now,  the  coal-barge,  the  penny 
steamer,  and  the  wherry  full  of  shop  boys  and  girls.  I 
dwell  however  for  a  moment  only  on  the  naval  aspect 
of  the  tidal  waters  in  the  days  of  Alfred,  because  I  can 
refer  you  for  all  detail  on  this  part  of  our  subject  to  the 
wonderful  opening  chapter  of  Dean  Stanley's  History  of 
Westminster  Abbey,  where  you  will  find  the  origin  of  the 
name  of  London  given  as  The  City  of  Ships."  ^  He  does 
not,  however,  tell  you,  that  there  were  built,  then  and 
there,  the  biggest  war-ships  in  the  world.  I  have  often  said 
to  friends  who  praised  my  own  books  that  I  would  rather 
have  written  that  chapter  than  any  one  of  them ;  yet  if  I 

*  Here  Alfred's  Silver  Penny  was  shown  and  commented  on,  thus: 
Of  what  London  was  like  in  the  days  of  faith,  I  can  show  you  one 
piece  of  artistic  evidence.  It  is  Alfred's  silver  penny  struck  in  London 
mint.  The  character  of  a  coinage  is  quite  conclusive  evidence  in  national 
history,  and  there  is  no  great  empire  in  progress,  but  tells  its  story  in 
beautiful  coins.  Here  in  Alfred's  penny,  a  round  coin  with  L.O.N.D.LN.I.A. 
struck  on  it,  you  have  just  the  same  beauty  of  design,  the  same  enig- 
matical arrangement  of  letters,  as  in  the  early  inscription,  which  it  is 
*the  pride  of  my  life'  to  have  discovered  at  Venice.  This  inscription 
the  first  words  that  Venice  ever  speaks  aloud ')  is,  it  will  be  remembered, 
on  the  Church  of  S.  Giacomo  di  Rialto,  and  runs,  being  interpreted — 
'  Around  this  temple,  let  the  merchant's  law  be  just,  his  weights  true, 
and  his  covenants  faithful.'  *'  ^ 

^  [Historical  Memorials  of  Westminster  Abbey,  p.  3  (ed,  1882).] 

^  [This  note  was  added  from  the  report  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  reprinted  in 

Studies  in  Raskin,  p.  225.    For  another  reference  to  the  Venetian  inscription,  see 

above,  p.  232.] 


II.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH 


'lad  been  able  to  write  the  historical  part  of  it,  the  con- 
clusions drawn  would  have  been  extremely  different.  The 
Dean  indeed  describes  with  a  poet's  joy  the  lliver  of  wells, 
vvhich  rose  from  those  once  consecrated  springs  which  now 
lie  choked  in  Holywell  and  Clerkenwell,  and  the  rivulet  of 
Ulebrig  which  crossed  the  Strand  under  the  Ivy  bridge";^ 
out  it  is  only  in  the  spirit  of  a  modern  citizen  of  Belgravia 
^.hat  he  exults  in  the  fact  that  **the  great  arteries  of  our 
crowded  streets,  the  vast  sewers  which  cleanse  our  habita- 
tions, are  fed  by  the  life-blood  of  those  old  and  living 
streams ;  that  underneath  our  tread  the  Tyburn,  and  the 
Holborn,  and  the  Fleet,  and  the  Wall  Brook,  are  still 
pursuing  their  ceaseless  course,  still  ministering  to  the  good 
of  man,  though  in  a  far  different  fashion  than  when  Druids 
irank  of  their  sacred  springs,  and  Saxons  were  baptized  in 
their  rushing  waters,  ages  ago."  '^ 

39.  Whatever  sympathy  you  may  feel  with  these  elo- 
quent expressions  of  that  entire  complacency  in  the  present, 
past,  and  future,  which  peculiarly  animates  Dean  Stanley's 
writings,  I  must,  in  this  case,  pray  you  to  observe  that 
the  transmutation  of  holy  wells  into  sewers  has,  at  least, 
destroyed  the  charm  and  utility  of  the  Thames  as  a  salmon 
istream,  and  I  must  ask  you  to  read  with  attention  the 
succeeding  portions  of  the  chapter  which  record  the  legends 
of  the  river  fisheries  in  their  relation  to  the  first  Abbey  of 
Westminster ;  dedicated  by  its  builders  to  St.  Peter,  not 
merely  in  his  office  of  corner-stone  of  the  Church,  nor  even 
figuratively  as  a  fisher  of  men,^  but  directly  as  a  fisher  of 
Ifish: — and  which  maintained  themselves,  you  will  see,  in 
lactual  ceremony  down  to  1382,  when  a  fisherman  still 
jannually  took  his  place  beside  the  Prior,  after  having 
jbrought  in  a  salmon  for  St.  Peter,  which  was  carried  in 

I  state  down  the  middle  of  the  refectory. 

40.  But  as  I  refer  to  this  page  for  the  exact  words,  my 


1 

2 
3 


Historical  Memorials  of  Westminster  Abbey,  p.  4.] 
Ibid.,  p.  5.] 
'Matthew  iv.  19. 


444        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


eye  is  caught  by  one   of  the  sentences   of  Londonian 
thought  which  constantly  pervert  the  well-meant  books  o 
pious  England.    "  We  see  also,"  says  the  Dean,    the  unior 
of  innocent  fiction  with  worldly  craft,  which  marks  so  mam 
of  the  legends  both  of  Pagan  and  Christian  times."  ^  ] 
might  simply  reply  to  this  insinuation  that  times  which! 
have  no  legends  differ  from  the  legendary  ones  merely  by 
uniting  guilty,  instead  of  innocent,  fiction,  with  worldly 
craft;  but  I  must  farther  advise  you  that  the  legends  ol 
these  passionate  times  are  in  no  wise,  and  in  no  sense,  fic-l 
tion  at  all;  but  the  true  record  of  impressions  made  on  the 
minds  of  persons  in  a  state  of  eager  spiritual  excitement, 
brought  into  bright  focus  by  acting  steadily  and  frankly 
under  its  impulses.    I  could  tell  you  a  great  deal  more 
about  such  things  than  you  would  believe,  and  therefore, 
a  great  deal  more  than  it  would  do  you  the  least  good  to 
hear ; — but  this  much  any  who  care  to  use  their  common 
sense  modestly,  cannot  but  admit,  that  unless  they  choose^ 
to  try  the  rough  life  of  the  Christian  ages,  they  cannot 
understand  its  practical  consequences.    You  have  all  been 
taught  by  Lord  Macaulay  and  his  school^  that  because  you 
have  Carpets  instead  of  rushes  for  your  feet;  and  Feather- 
beds  instead  of  fern  for  your  backs;  and  Kickshaws  instead 
of  beef  for  your  eating;  and  Drains  instead  of  Holy  Wells 
for  your  drinking ; — that,  therefore,  you  are  the  Cream  of 
Creation,  and  every  one  of  you  a  seven-headed  Solomon. 
Stay  in  those  pleasant  circumstances  and  convictions  if  you 
please ;  but  don't  accuse  your  roughly  bred  and  fed  fathers 
of  telling  lies  about  the  aspect  the  earth  and  sky  bore  to 
thevi, — till  you  have  trodden  the  earth  as  they,  barefoot, 
and  seen  the  heavens  as  they,  face  to  face.    If  you  care  to 
see  and  to  know  for  yourselves,  you  may  do  it  with  little 

*  Not  Londinian. 
^  [Hutorical  Memorials  of  We.fiiuin.ster  Abbey,  p.  19.] 

2  [See  chapter  iii.  of  the  History  of  England.  For  other  references  in  a  like  sense 
to  Macaulay,  see  A  Joy  for  Ever,  §"  168  (Vol.  XVI.  pp.  154,  155  n.) ;  Vol.  XXVI. 
p.  560;  and  below,  p.  510.] 


II.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH 


pains ;  you  need  not  do  any  great  thing,^  you  needn't  keep 
one  eye  open  and  the  other  shut  for  ten  years  over  a 
microscope,  nor  fight  your  way  through  icebergs  and  dark- 
ness to  knowledge  of  the  celestial  pole.  Simply,  do  as  much 
as  king  after  king  of  the  Saxons  did, — put  rough  shoes  on 
your  feet  and  a  rough  cloak  on  your  shoulders,  and  walk 
to  Rome  and  back.  Sleep  by  the  roadside,  when  it  is  fine, 
—in  the  first  outhouse  you  can  find,  when  it  is  wet;  and 
live  on  bread  and  water,  with  an  onion  or  two,  all  the 
way;  and  if  the  experiences  which  you  will  have  to  relate 
on  your  return  do  not,  as  may  well  be,  deserve  the  name 
of  spiritual,  at  all  events  you  will  not  be  disposed  to  let 
other  people  regard  them  either  as  Poetry  or  Fiction. 

41.  With  this  warning,  presently  to  be  at  greater  length 
insisted  on,^  I  trace  for  you,  in  Dean  Stanley's  words,  which 
cannot  be  bettered  except  in  the  collection  of  their  more 
earnest  passages  from  among  his  interludes  of  graceful  but 
dangerous  qualification, — I  trace,  with  only  such  omission, 
the  story  he  has  told  us  of  the  foundation  of  that  Abbey, 
which,  he  tells  you,  was  the  Mother  of  London,  and  has  ever 
been  the  shrine  and  the  throne  of  English  faith  and  truth. 

"  The  gradual  formation  of  a  monastic  body,  indicated  in  the  charters 
of  Offa  and  Edgar,  marks  the  spread  of  the  Benedictine  order  throughout 
England,  under  the  influence  of  Dunstan.  The  '  terror '  of  the  spot,  which 
had  still  been  its  chief  characteristic  in  the  charter  of  the  wild  Offa,  had, 
in  the  days  of  the  more  peaceful  Edgar,  given  way  to  a  dubious  'renown.' 
Twelve  monks  is  the  number  traditionally  said  to  have  been  established 
by  Dunstan.  A  few  acres  further  up  the  river  formed  their  chief  property, 
and  their  monastic  character  was  sufficiently  recognized  to  have  given  to  the 
old  locality  of  the  'terrible  place'  the  name  of  the  'Western  Monastery/ 
!or  'Minster  of  the  West/''^ 

The  Benedictines  then— twelve  Benedictine  monks— thus 
begin  the  building  of  existent  Christian  London.  You  know 
I  told  you  the  Benedictines  are  the  Doing  people,  as  the 
disciples  of  St.  Augustine  the  Sentimental  people.*  The 

>  [2  Kings  v.  13.] 
«  [See  below,  p.  447.] 

«  [Historical  Memorials  of  Westminster  Ahhey,  p.  lO.J 
*  [See  above,  §  22,  p.  432.] 


446        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


Benedictines  find  no  terror  in  their  own  thoughts — face  the 
terror  of  places — change  it  into  beauty  of  places, — make 
this  terrible  place,  a  Motherly  Place — Mother  of  London. 

42.  This  first  Westminster,  however,  the  Dean  goes  on 
to  say,  seems  to  have  been  overrun  by  the  Danes,  and  it 
would  have  had  no  further  history  but  for  the  combina- 
tion of  circumstances  which  directed  hither  the  notice  of 
Edward  the  Confessor." 

I  haven't  time  to  read  you  all  the  combination  of  cir- 
cumstances.   The  last  clinching  circumstance  was  this — 

"  There  was  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Worcester,  '  far  from  men  in  the 
wilderness,  on  the  slope  of  a  wood,  in  a  cave  deep  down  in  the  grey 
rock/  a  holy  hermit  ^of  great  age,  living  on  fruits  and  roots.'  One  night, 
when,  after  reading  in  the  Scriptures  '  how  hard  are  the  pains  of  hell,  and 
how  the  enduring  life  of  Heaven  is  sweet  and  to  be  desired,'  he  could 
neither  sleep  nor  repose,  St.  Peter  appeared  to  him,  'bright  and  beautiful, 
like  to  a  clerk,'  and  warned  him  to  tell  the  King  that  he  was  released  from 
his  vow;  that  on  that  ver}^  day  his  messengers  would  return  from  Rome;" 
(that  is  the  combination  of  circumstances — bringing  Pope's  order  to  build 
a  church  to  release  the  King  from  his  vow  of  pilgrimage);  ''that  'at 
Thorn ey,  two  leagues  from  the  city,'  was  the  spot  marked  out  where,  in 
an  ancient  church,  '  situated  low,'  he  was  to  establish  a  perfect  Benedictine 
monastery,  which  should  be  *  the  gate  of  heaven,  the  ladder  of  prayer, 
whence  those  v.ho  serve  St.  Peter  there,  shall  by  him  be  admitted  into 
Paradise.'  The  hermit  writes  the  account  of  the  vision  on  parchment, 
seals  it  with  wax,  and  brings  it  to  the  King,  who  compares  it  with  the 
answer  of  the  messengers,  just  arrived  from  Rome,  and  determines  on 
carrying  out  the  design  as  the  Apostle  had  ordered."  ^ 

43.  The  ancient  church,  "situated  low,"  indicated  in 
this  vision  the  one  whose  attached  monastery  had  been 
destroyed  by  the  Danes,  but  its  little  church  remained, 
and  was  already  dear  to  the  Confessor,  not  only  from  the 
lovely  tradition  of  its  dedication  by  the  spirit  of  St.  Peter; 
(you  must  read  that  for  yourselves;)  but  also  because  of 
two  miracles  happening  there  to  the  King  himself. 

"The  first  was  the  cure  of  a  cripple,  who  sat  in  the  road  between  the 
Palace  and  '  the  Chapel  of  St.  Peter,'  which  was  '  near,'  and  who  explained 
to  the  Chamberlain  Hugolin  that,  after  six  pilgrimages  to  Rome  in  vain, 
St.   Peter  had  promised  his  cure  if  the  King  would,  on  his  own  royal 

^  [Historical  Memorials  of  Westminster  Abbey,  p.  17.] 


I 


II.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH 


leck,  carry  him  to  the  Monastery.  The  King  immediately  consented; 
ind,  amidst  the  scoffs  of  the  court,  bore  the  poor  man  to  the  steps  of 
he  High  Altar.  There  the  cripple  was  received  by  Godric  the  sacristan, 
md  walked  away  on  his  own  restored  feet,  hanging  his  stool  on  the  wall 
or  a  trophy. 

« Before  that  same  High  Altar  was  also  believed  to  have  been  seen 
me  of  the  Eucharistical  portents,  so  frequent  in  the  Middle  Ages.  A 
;hild,  *pm'e  and  bright  like  a  spirit,'  appeared  to  the  King  in  the  sacra- 
aental  elements.  Leofric,  Earl  of  Mercia,  who,  with  his  famous  countess, 
Todiva,  was  present,  saw  it  also. 

<'Such  as  these  were  the  motives  of  Edward.  Under  their  influence 
\vas  fixed  what  has  ever  since  been  the  local  centre  of  the  English 
nonarchy."  ^ 

44.  "Such  as  these  were  the  motives  of  EdAvard,"  says 
he  Dean.  Yes,  certainly;  but  such  as  these  also,  first, 
vere  the  acts  and  visions  of  Edward.  Take  care  that  you 
lon't  slip  away,  by  the  help  of  the  glycerine  of  the  word 
•  motives,"  into  fancying  that  all  these  tales  are  only  the 
iter  colours  and  pictorial  metaphors  of  sentimental  piety. 
They  are  either  plain  truth  or  black  lies ;  take  your  choice, 
—but  don't  tickle  and  treat  yourselves  with  the  prettiness 
)r  the  grotesqueness  of  them,  as  if  they  were  Andersen's 
airy  tales.  Either  the  King  did  carry  the  beggar  on  his 
)ack,  or  he  didn't;  either  Godiva  rode  through  Coventry, 
>r  she  didn't ;  either  the  Earl  Leofric  saw  the  vision  of  the 
)right  child  at  the  altar — or  he  lied  like  a  knave.  Judge, 
,s  you  will ;  but  do  not  Doubt. 

45.  "The  Abbey  was  fifteen  years  in  building.  The  King  spent  upon 
t  one-tenth  of  the  property  of  the  kingdom.  It  was  to  be  a  marvel  of  its 
:ind.  As  in  its  origin  it  bore  the  traces  of  the  fantastic  and  childish"  (I 
aust  pause,  to  ask  you  to  substitute  for  these  blameful  terms,  "fantastic 
|nd  childish,"  the  better  ones  of  "imaginative  and  pure")  "character  of 
|he  King  and  of  the  age;  in  its  architecture  it  bore  the  stamp  of  the 
|>eculiar  position  which  Edward  occupied  in  English  history  between  Saxon 
|nd  Norman.  By  birth  he  was  a  Saxon,  but  in  all  else  he  was  a  foreigner. 
Accordingly  the  Church  at  Westminster  was  a  wide-sweeping  innovation  on 
11  that  had  been  seen  before.  *  Destroying  the  old  building,'  he  says  in 
lis  charter,  *I  have  built  up  a  new^  one  from  the  very  foundation.'  Its 
ame  as  a  '  new  style  of  composition  '  lingered  in  the  minds  of  men  for 
:enerations.  It  was  the  first  cruciform  church  in  England,  from  which  all 
he  rest  of  like  shape  w^ere  copied — an  expression  of  the  increasing  hold 


1  [Historical  Memorials  of  Westminster  Ahbey^  p.  20.] 


448        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

which,  in  the  tenth  century,  the  idea  of  the  Crucifixion  had  laid  on  tht 
imagination  of  Europe.    The  massive  roof  and  pillars  formed  a  contrastj  J 
with  the  rude  wooden  rafters  and  beams  of  the  common  Saxon  churches  i 
Its  very  size — occupying,  as  it  did,  almost  the  whole  area  of  the  present  i 
building — was  in  itself  portentous.    The  deep  foundations,  of  large  square  i 
blocks  of  grey  stone,  were  duly  laid  ;  the  east  end  was  rounded  into  an  ! 
apse  ;  a  tower  rose  in  the  centre,  crowned  by  a  cupola  of  wood.    At  the  t 
western  end  were  erected  two  smaller  towers,  with  five  large  bells.    The  J 
hard  strong  stones  were  richly  sculptured ;  the  windows  were  filled  with  J 
stained  glass;  the  roof  was  covered  with  lead.    The  cloisters,  chapter-house, 
refectory,  dormitory,  the  infirmary,  with  its  spacious  chapel,  if  not  com- 
pleted by  Edward,  were  all  begun,  and  finished  in  the  next  generation 
on  the  same  plan.     This  structure,  venerable  as  it  would  be  if  it  had 
lasted  to  our  time,  had  almost  entirely  vanished.    Possibly  one  vast  dark 
arch  in  the  southern  transept,  certainly  the  substructures  of  the  dormitory, 
with  their  huge  pillars,  '  grand  and  regal  at  the  bases  and  capitals,'  the 
massive,  low-browed   passage   leading  from  the   great   cloister   to   Little^  J 
Dean's  Yard,  and  some  portions  of  the   refectory,  and  of  the  infirmary 
chapel,  remain  as  specimens  of  the  work  which  astonished  the  last  age  ol 
the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  first  age  of  the  Norman  monarchy."  ^ 

46.  Hitherto  I  have  read  to  you  with  only  supplemental 
comment.  But  in  the  next  following  passage,  with  which 
I  close  my  series  of  extracts,  sentence  after  sentence  occurs, 
at  which  as  I  read,  I  must  raise  my  hand,  to  mark  it  for 
following  deprecation,  or  denial. 

"  In  the  centre  of  Westminster  Abbey  thus  lies  its  Founder,  and  such 
is  the  story  of  its  foundation.    Even  apart  from  the  legendary  elements  in 
which  it  is  involved,  it  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  by  the  fantastic 
character  of  all  its  circumstances.    We  seem  to  be  in  a  world  of  poetry." 
(I    protest.  No.)    ''Edward   is   four   centuries  later  than   Ethelbert  and 
Augustine ;  but  the  origin  of  Canterbury  is  commonplace  and  prosaic  com- 
pared with  the   origin  of  Westminster."     (Yes,  that's   true.)    ''We   can  i  | 
hardly  imagine  a  figure  more  incongruous  to  the  soberness  of  later  times  I  j 
than    the    quaint,  irresolute,  wayward    prince  whose    chief  characteristics  | 
have  just  been  described.    His  titles  of  Confessor  and  Saint  belong  not  to 
the  general  instincts  of  Christendom  ;  but  to  the  most  transitory  feelings 
of  the  age."    (I  protest.  No.)    "His  opinions,  his  prevailing  motives,  were 
such  as  in   no  part  of  modern   Europe  would  now  be  shared  by  any 
educated  teacher  or  ruler."    (That's  true  enough.)    "But  in  spite  of  these 
irreconcilable  differences,  there  was  a  solid  ground  for  the  charm  which  he 
exercised  over  his  contemporaries.    His  childish  and  eccentric  fancies  have  i  ^ 
passed  away;"  (I  protest.  No;)  "but  his  innocent  faith  and  his  sympathy  »  , 
with  his  people  are  qualities  which,  even  in  our  altered  times,  may  still 
retain  their  place  in  the  economy  of  the  world.    Westminster  Abbey,  so 

^  [Historical  Memorials  of  Westmimter  Abbey,  pp.  22-23.] 


II.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH  449 

ive  hear  it  said,  sometimes  with  a  cynical  sneer,  sometimes  with  a  timorous 
icruple,  has  admitted  within  its  walls  many  who  have  been  great  without 
jeing  good,  noble  with  a  nobleness  of  the  earth  earthy,  worldly  with  the 
wisdom  of  this  world.  But  it  is  a  counterbalancing  reflection,  that  the 
central  tomb,  round  which  all  those  famous  names  have  clustered,  contains 
:he  ashes  of  one  who,  weak  and  erring  as  he  was,  rests  his  claims  of 
nterment  here,  not  on  any  act  of  power  or  fame,  but  only  on  his  artless 
liety  and  simple  goodness.  He,  towards  whose  dust  was  attracted  the 
ierce  Norman,  and  the  proud  Plantagenet,  and  the  grasping  Tudor,  and 
he  fickle  Stuart,  even  the  Independent  Oliver,  the  Dutch  Wilham,  and 
he  Hanoverian  George,  was  one  whose  humble  graces  are  within  the 
•each  of  every  man,  v/oman,  and  child  of  every  time,  if  we  rightly  part 
;he  immortal  substance  from  the  perishable  form."  i 

47.  Now  I  have  read  you  these  passages  from  Dean 
Stanley  as  the  most  accurately  investigatory,  the  most  gene- 
•ously  sympathetic,  the  most  reverently  acceptant  account 
)f  these  days,  and  their  people,  which  you  can  yet  find 
n  any  English  history.  But  consider  now,  point  by  point, 
vhere  it  leaves  you.  You  are  told,  first,  that  you  are 
iving  in  an  age  of  poetry.  But  the  days  of  poetry  are 
ihose  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  not  of  Bede:  nay,  for 
;heir  especial  wealth  in  melodious  theology  and  beautifully 
hythmic  and  pathetic  meditation,  perhaps  the  days  which 
lave  given  us  Hiawatha,^  In  Memoriam,  The  Christian  Year, 
aid  the  SouVs  Diary  of  George  Macdonald,  may  be  not 
vith  disgrace  compared  with  those  of  Caedmon.  And 
lothing  can  be  farther  different  from  the  temper,  nothing 
ess  conscious  of  the  effort,  of  a  poet,  than  any  finally 
iuthentic  document  to  which  you  can  be  referred  for  the 
elation  of  a  Saxon  miracle.' 

48.  I  will  read  you,  for  a  perfectly  typical  example,  an 
iccount  of  one  from  Bede's  Life  of  St,  Cuthbert}  The 

^  [Historical  Memorials  of  Westminster  Abbey j  pp.  28-29.] 

2  [For  other  references  to  Hiawatha,  see  Modern  Painters,  vol.  ii.  (Vol.  IV. 
».  355),  and  Elements  of  Prosody,  §  38  (Vol.  XXXI.  p.  365).  The  book  by  George 
►lacdonald  is  A  Book  of  Strife,  in  the  form  of  the  Diary  oj  an  Old  Soul  (Mr.  Hughes  : 
ieaufort  Street,  Chelsea,  London,  1880).] 

3  [Compare,  on  this  point,  Ruskin's  criticism  of  a  similar  passage  in  Milman  ; 
bove,  p.  198.] 

*  [For  another  translation  of  the  passage,  see  ch.  xxxvi.  pp.  589-590  in  The 
Jistorical  Works  of  the  Venerable  Bede,  translated  by  Rev.  J.  Stevenson  (The  Church 
historians  of  England,  vol.  i.  part  ii.,  1852).] 

XXXIII.  2  ^ 


450        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


passage  is  a  favourite  one  of  my  own,  but  I  do  not  i 
the  least  anticipate  its  producing  upon  you  the  solemniz 
ing  effect  which  I  think  I  could  command  from  reading 
instead,  a  piece  of  Mai^mion,  Manfred ,  or  Childe  Harold. 

.  .  .  He  had  one  day  left  his  cell  to  give  advice  to  some  visitors 
and  when  he  had  finished,  he  said  to  them,  '  I  must  now  go  in  again,  bu 
do  you,  as  you  are  inclined  to  depart,  first  take  food ;  and  when  you  hav 
cooked  and  eaten  that  goose  which  is  hanging  on  the  wall,  go  on  boari 
your  vessel  in  God's  name  and  return  home.'  He  then  uttered  a  prayei 
and,  having  blessed  them,  went  in.  But  they,  as  he  had  bidden  their 
took  some  food ;  but  having  enough  provisions  of  their  own,  which  the 
had  brought  with  them,  they  did  not  touch  the  goose. 

"  But  when  they  had  refreshed  themselves  they  tried  to  go  on  bean 
their  vessel,  but  a  sudden  storm  utterly  prevented  them  from  putting  t 
sea.  They  were  thus  detained  seven  days  in  the  island  by  the  roughnes 
of  the  waves,  and  yet  they  could  not  call  to  mind  what  fault  they  hac 
committed.  They  therefore  returned  to  have  an  interview  with  the  hoi 
father,  and  to  lament  to  him  their  detention.  He  exhorted  them  to  b( 
patient,  and  on  the  seventh  day  came  out  to  console  their  sorrow,  and  t( 
give  them  pious  exhortations.  When,  however,  he  had  entered  the  house 
in  which  they  were  stopping,  and  saw  that  the  goose  was  not  eaten,  h( 
reproved  their  disobedience  with  mild  countenance  and  in  gentle  language 
'  Have  you  not  left  the  goose  still  hanging  in  its  place  }  What  wonder  if 
it  that  the  storm  has  prevented  your  departure  Put  it  immediately  int( 
the  caldron,  and  boil  and  eat  it,  that  the  sea  may  become  tranquil,  am 
you  may  return  home.' 

"  They  immediately  did  as  he  commanded ;  and  it  happened  mosi 
wonderfully  that  the  moment  the  kettle  began  to  boil  the  wind  began  tc 
cease,  and  the  waves  to  be  still.  Having  finished  their  repast,  and  seeing 
that  the  sea  was  calm,  they  went  on  board,  and  to  their  great  delight 
though  with  shame  for  their  neglect,  reached  home  with  a  fair  wind 
Now  this,  as  I  have  related,  I  did  not  pick  up  from  any  chance  authority 
but  I  had  it  from  one  of  whose  who  were  present,  h  most  reverend  monk 
and  priest  of  the  same  monastery,  Cynemund,  who  still  lives,  known  to 
many  in  the  neighbourhood  for  his  years  and  the  purity  of  his  life." 

49.  I  hope  that  the  memory  of  this  story,  which,  think- 
ing it  myself  an  extremely  pretty  one,  I  have  given  you, 
not  only  for  a  type  of  sincerity  and  simplicity,  but  for  an 
illustration  of  obedience,  may  at  all  events  quit  you,  for 
good  and  all,  of  the  notion  that  the  believers  and  wit- 
nesses of  miracle  were  poetical  persons.  Saying  no  more 
on  the  head  of  that  allegation,  1  proceed  to  the  Dean's 
second  one,  which  I  cannot  but  interpret  as  also  intended 
to  be  injurious, — that  they  were  artless  and  childish  ones; 


II.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH 


ind  that  because  of  this  rudeness  and  puerility,  their 
(notives  and  opinions  would  not  be  shared  by  any  states- 
nen  of  the  present  day. 

50.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  Edward  the  Confessor  was 
himself  in  many  respects  of  really  childish  temperament; 
Qot  therefore,  perhaps,  as  I  before  suggested  to  you,^  less 
venerable.  But  the  age  of  which  we  are  examining  the 
progress,  was  by  no  means  represented  or  governed  by  men 
of  similar  disposition.  It  was  eminently  productive  of — it 
was  altogether  governed,  guided,  and  instructed  by — men  of 
the  widest  and  most  brilliant  faculties,  whether  construc- 
tive or  speculative,  that  the  world  till  then  had  seen; 
men  whose  acts  became  the  romance,  whose  thoughts  the 
wisdom,  and  whose  arts  the  treasure,  of  a  thousand  years 
of  futurity. 

51.  I  warned  you  at  the  close  of  last  lecture^  against 
:he  too  agreeable  vanity  of  supposing  that  the  Evangeliza- 
cion  of  the  world  began  at  St.  Martin's,  Canterbury.  Again 
and  again  you  will  indeed  find  the  stream  of  the  Gospel 
contracting  itself  into  narrow  channels,  and  appearing,  after 
long-concealed  filtration,  through  veins  of  unmeasured  rock, 
with  the  bright  resilience  of  a  mountain  spring.  But  you 
will  find  it  the  only  candid,  and  therefore  the  only  wise, 
way  of  research,  to  look  in  each  era  of  Christendom  for 
the  minds  of  culminating  power  in  all  its  brotherhood  of 
nations ;  and,  careless  of  local  impulse,  momentary  zeal, 
picturesque  incident,  or  vaunted  miracle,  to  fasten  your 
attention  upon  the  force  of  character  in  the  men,  whom, 
over  each  newly-converted  race,  Heaven  visibly  sets  for  its 
shepherds  and  kings,  to  bring  forth  judgment  unto  victory.^ 
Of  these  I  will  name  to  you,  as  messengers  of  God  and 
masters  of  men,  five  monks  and  five  kings;  in  whose 
arms  during  the  range  of  swiftly  gainful  centuries  which  we 
are  following,  the  life  of  the  world  lay  as  a  nursling  babe. 

1  [See  above,  p.  439  n.] 

2  [See  above,  p.  438.] 

3  [See  Matthew  xii.  20.] 


452        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


Remember,  in  their  successive  order, — of  monks,  St.  Jerome, 
St.  Augustine,  St.  Martin,  St.  Benedict,  and  St.  Gregory; 
of  kings, — and  your  national  vanity  may  be  surely  enough  J 
appeased  in  recognizing  two  of  them  for  Saxon — Theodoric, 
Charlemagne,  Alfred,  Canute,  and  the  Confessor.  I  will 
read  three  passages  to  you,  out  of  the  literal  words  of 
three  of  these  ten  men,  without  saying  whose  they  are, 
that  you  may  compare  them  with  the  best  and  most  ex- 
alted you  have  read  expressing  the  philosophy,  the  religion, 
and  the  policy  of  to-day, — from  which  I  admit,  with  Dean 
Stanley,  but  with  a  far  different  meaning  from  his,  that 
they  are  indeed  separate  for  evermore. 

52.  I  give  you  first,  for  an  example  of  Philosophy,  a 
single  sentence,  containing  all — so  far  as  I  can  myself  dis- 
cern— that  it  is  possible  for  us  to  know,  or  well  for  us  to 
believe,  respecting  the  world  and  its  laws : — 

"  Of  God's  universal  Providence,  ruling  all,  and  comprising  all. 

Wherefore  the  great  and  mighty  God ;  He  that  made  man  a  reason- 
able creature  of  soul  and  body,  and  He  that  did  neither  let  him  pass  un- 
punished for  his  sin,  nor  yet  excluded  him  from  mercy ;  He  that  gave,  both 
unto  good  and  bad,  essence  with  the  stones,  power  of  production  with  the 
trees,  senses  with  the  beasts  of  the  field,  and  understanding  with  the  angels ; 
He  from  whom  is  all  being,  beauty,  form,  and  order,  number,  weight,  and 
measure ;  He  from  whom  all  nature,  mean  and  excellent,  all  seeds  of  form, 
all  forms  of  seed,  all  motion,  both  of  forms  and  seeds,  derive  and  have 
being ;  He  that  gave  flesh  the  original  beauty,  strength,  propagation,  form 
and  shape,  health  and  symmetry ;  He  that  gave  the  unreasonable  soul, 
sense,  memory,  and  appetite ;  the  reasonable,  besides  these,  phantasy, 
understanding,  and  will ;  He,  I  say,  having  left  neither  heaven,  nor  earth, 
nor  angel,  nor  man,  no,  nor  the  most  base  and  contemptible  creature, 
neither  the  bird's  feather,  nor  the  herb's  flower,  nor  the  tree's  leaf,  without 
the  true  harmony  of  their  parts,  and  peaceful  concord  of  composition : — It 
is  in  no  way  credible  that  He  would  leave  the  kingdoms  of  men  and  their 
bondages  and  freedom  loose  and  uncomprised  in  the  laws  of  His  eternal 
providence."  * 

53.  This  for  the  philosophy.  Next,  I  take  for  example 
of  the  Religion  of  our  ancestors,  a  prayer,  personally  and 

*  From  St.  Augustine's  Citie  of  God,  Book  V.  ch.  xi.  (English  trans., 
printed  by  George  Eld,  l6lO). 


II.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH  453 


passionately  offered  to  the  Deity  conceived  as  you  have 
:his  moment  heard: — 

Thou  who  art  the  Father  of  that  Son  which  has  awakened  us 
md  yet  urgeth  us  out  of  the  sleep  of  our  sins,  and  exhorteth  us  that 
ve  become  Thine ;  " — 

note  you  that,  for  apprehension  of  what  Redemption 
neans,  against  your  base  and  cowardly  modern  notion  of 
scaping  whipping.^  Not  to  take  away  the  Punishment  of 
Sin,  but  by  His  Resurrection^  to  raise  us  out  of  the  sleep 
)f  sin  itself!)— 

'to  Thee,  Lord,  I  pray,  -who  art  the  supreme  truth;  for  all  the  truth 
hat  is,  is  truth  from  Thee.  Thee  I  implore,  O  Lord,  who  art  the  highest 
v'isdom.  Through  Thee  are  wise  all  those  that  are  so.  Thou  art  the  true 
ife,  and  through  Thee  are  living  all  those  that  are  so.  Thou  art  the 
upreme  felicity,  and  from  Thee  all  have  become  happy  that  are  so.  Thou 
rt  the  highest  good,  and  from  Thee  all  beauty  springs.  Thou  art  the  in- 
ellectual  light,  and  from  Thee  man  derives  his  understanding. 

"  To  Thee,  O  God,  I  call  and  speak.  Hear,  O  hear  me,  Lord  !  for  Thou 
rt  my  God  and  my  Lord  ;  my  Father  and  my  Creator ;  my  ruler  and  my 
lope  ;  my  wealth  and  my  honour;  my  house,  my  country,  my  salvation, 
nd  my  life !  Hear,  hear  me,  O  Lord !  Few  of  Thy  servants  comprehend 
rhee.  But  Thee  alone  I  love,f  indeed,  above  all  other  things.  Thee  I 
eek  :  Thee  I  will  follow :  Thee  I  am  ready  to  serve.  Under  Thy  powers 
desire  to  abide,  for  Thou  alone  art  the  Sovereign  of  all.  I  pray  Thee 
0  command  me  as  Thou  wilt."  ^ 

54.  You  see  this  prayer  is  simply  the  expansion  of  that 
lause  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  which  most  men  eagerly  omit 

*  Compare  the  legend  at  the  feet  of  the  Lion  of  the  Tribe  of  Judah 
n  the  golden  Gospel  of  Charles  le  Chauve  (at  Munich) : — 

"Hic  Leo  Surgendo  portas  confregit  Averni 
Qui  nunquam  dormit,  nusquam  dormitat  in  ^evum  ; " 

The  leaf  has  been  exquisitely  drawn  and  legend  communicated  to  me  by 
^rofessor  Westwood.    It  is  written  in  gold  on  purple.^ 

t  Meaning— not  that  he  is  of  those  few,  but  that,  without  compre- 
lending,  at  least,  as  a  dog,  he  can  love. 

*  [Hamlet,  Act  ii.  sc.  2.] 

2  [For  this  prayer  of  Alfred  the  Great  (below,  §  59),  see  Sharon  Turner's  "  Anglo- 
jaxons":  History  of  England,  vol.  ii.  pp.  134-135.] 

3  [A  copy  of  the  Gospels  written  in  gold  uncial  letters  in  870,  formerly  pre- 
erved  at  Ratisbon,  now  in  the  Royal  Library  at  Munich.  Specimens  of  the  \^  riting 
re  given  in  the  2nd  vol.  of  Silvestre's  PaleograpMe  Universelle,  1840.  For  other 
eferences  to  it,  see  below,  §§  102,  110  n.  (pp.  495,  502);  and  for  Professor 
Vestwoodj  see  Vol.  XV.  p.  424.] 


454         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


from  it, — Fiat  voluntas  tua.  In  being  so,  it  sums  th( 
Christian  prayer  of  all  ages.  See  now,  in  the  third  places 
how  far  this  king's  letter  I  am  going  to  read  to  you  sum? 
also  Christian  Policy: — 

"Wherefore  I  render  high  thanks  to  Almighty  God,  for  the  happt 
accompHshment  of  all  the  desires  which  I  have  set  before  me,  and  for  the 
satisfying  of  my  every  wish. 

^'Now  therefore,  be  it  known  to  you  all,  that  to  Almighty  God  Him4 
self  I  have,  on  my  knees,  devoted  my  life,  to  the  end  that  in  all  things  I 
may  do  justice,  and  with  justice  and  rightness  rule  the  kingdoms  and 
peoples  under  me  ;  throughout  everything  preserving  an  impartial  judg- 
ment. If,  heretofore,  I  have,  through  being,  as  young  men  are,  impulsive  or 
careless,  done  anything  unjust,  I  mean,  with  God's  help,  to  lose  no  time 
in  remedying  my  fault.  To  which  end  I  call  to  witness  my  counsellors,  tc 
whom  I  have  entrusted  the  counsels  of  the  kingdom,  and  I  charge  them  that 
by  no  means,  be  it  through  fear  of  me,  or  the  favour  of  any  other  powerful 
personage,  to  consent  to  any  injustice,  or  to  suffer  any  to  shoot  out  in  any 
part  of  my  kingdom.  I  charge  all  my  viscounts  and  those  set  over  my' 
whole  kingdom,  as  they  wish  to  keep  my  friendship  or  their  own  safety,  to 
use  no  unjust  force  to  any  man,  rich  or  poor ;  let  all  men,  noble  and  not 
noble,  rich  and  poor  alike,  be  able  to  obtain  their  rights  under  the  law's 
justice;  and  from  that  law  let  there  be  no  deviation,  either  to  favour  the 
king  or  any  powerful  person,  nor  to  raise  money  for  me.  I  have  no  need 
of  money  raised  by  what  is  unfair.  I  also  would  have  you  know  that  I  go 
now  to  make  peace  and  firm  treaty  by  the  counsels  of  all  my  subjects, 
with  those  nations  and  people  who  wished,  had  it  been  possible  for  them  to 
do  so,  which  it  was  not,  to  deprive  us  alike  of  kingdom  and  of  life.  God 
brought  down  their  strength  to  nought :  and  may  He  of  His  benign  love 
preserve  us  on  our  throne  and  in  honour.  Lastly,  when  I  have  made  peace 
with  the  neighbouring  nations,  and  settled  and  pacified  all  my  dominions 
in  the  East,  so  that  we  may  nowhere  have  any  war  or  enmity  to  fear,  I 
mean  to  come  to  England  this  summer,  as  soon  as  I  can  fit  out  vessels  to 
sail.  My  reason,  however,  in  sending  this  letter  first  is  to  let  all  the 
people  of  my  kingdom  share  in  the  joy  of  my  welfare :  for  as  you  your- 
selves know,  I  have  never  spared  myself  or  my^  labour ;  nor  will  I  ever 
do  so,  where  my  people  are  really  in  want  of  some  good  that  I  can  do 
them."  1 

55.  What  think  you  now,  in  candour  and  honour,  you|i 
youth  of  the  latter  days, — what  think  you  of  these  types 
of  the  thought,  devotion,  and  government,  which  not  in 
words,  but  pregnant  and  perpetual  fact,  animated  these 
which  you  have  been  accustomed  to  call  the  Dark  Ages? 

^  [Another  translation  of  Canute's  letter  to  Rome  may  be  found  in  Sharon  Turner, 
vol.  iii.  pp.  848-349;  and  the  original  in  William  of  Malmesbury,  Gesta  Regum 
Anglorum,  lib.  ii.  (vol.  i.  -yp.  311-312  of  the  edition  by  T.  D.  Hardy,  1840).] 


11.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH  455 


The  Philosophy  is  Augustine's;  the  Prayer  Alfred's; 
and  the  Letter  Canute's. 

And,  whatever  you  may  feel  respecting  the  beauty  or 
wisdom  of  these  sayings,  be  assured  of  one  thing  above  all, 
that  they  are  sincere;  and  of  another,  less  often  observed, 
that  they  are  joyful. 

56.  Be  assured,  in  the  first  place,  that  they  are  sincere. 
The  ideas  of  diplomacy  and  priestcraft  are  of  recent  times. 
No  false  knight  or  lying  priest  ever  prospered,  I  believe, 

I  in  any  age,   but  certainly  not  in  the  dark  ones.  Men 

I  prospered  then,  only  in  following  openly-declared  purposes, 
and  preaching  candidly  beloved  and  trusted  creeds. 

And  that  they  did  so  prosper,  in  the  degree  in  which 
they  accepted  and  proclaimed  the  Christian  Gospel,  may 

I  be  seen  by  any  of  you  in  your  historical  reading,  however 
partial,  if  only  you  will  admit  the  idea  that  it  could  be 
so,  and  was  likely  to  be  so.  You  are  all  of  you  in  the 
habit  of  supposing  that  temporal  prosperity  is  owing  either 
to  worldly  chance  or  to  worldly  prudence ;  and  is  never 

I  granted  in  any  visible  relation  to  states  of  religious  temper. 

I  Put  that  treacherous  doubt  away  from  you,  with  disdain ; 

I  take  for  basis  of  reasoning  the  noble  postulate,  that  the 
elements  of  Christian  faith  are  sound, — instead  of  the  base 
one,  that  they  are  deceptive ;  re-read  the  great  story  of  the 
world  in  that  light,  and  see  what  a  vividly  real,  yet  miracu- 
lous tenor,  it  will  then  bear  to  you.^ 

57.  Their  faith  then,  I  tell  you  first,  was  sincere;  I  tell 
you  secondly  that  it  was,  in  a  degree  few  of  us  can  now 
conceive,  joyful.  We  continually  hear  of  the  trials,  some- 
times of  the  victories,  of  Faith,— but  scarcely  ever  of  its 

I  pleasures.    Whereas,  at  this  time,  you  will  find  that  the 
j  chief  delight  of  all  good  men  was  in  the  recognition  of  the 
goodness  and  wisdom  of  the  Master,  who  had  come  to 
dwell  with  them  upon  earth.    It  is  almost  impossible  for 
you  to  conceive  the  vividness  of  this  sense  in  them;  it  is 

1  [For  a  passage  added  here  in  the  delivery  of  the  lecture,  see  the  Introduction ; 
above,  pp.  lii.-liii.] 


456        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


totally  impossible  for  you  to  conceive  the  comfort,  peace, 
and  force  of  it.  In  everything  that  you  now  do  or  seek, 
you  expose  yourselves  to  countless  miseries  of  shame  and 
disappointment,  because  in  your  doing  you  depend  on  no- 
thing but  your  own  powers,  and  in  seeking  choose  only  your 
own  gratification.  You  cannot  for  the  most  part  conceive 
of  any  work  but  for  your  own  interests,  or  the  interests  of 
others  about  whom  you  are  anxious  in  the  same  faithless 
way ;  everything  about  which  passion  is  excited  in  you  or 
skill  exerted  in  some  object  of  material  hfe,  and  the  idea 
of  doing  anything  except  for  your  own  praise  or  profit  has 
narrowed  itself  into  little  more  than  the  precentor's  invita- 
tion to  the  company  with  little  voice  and  less  practice  to 
"sing  to  the  praise  and  glory  of  God." 

58.  I  have  said  that  you  cannot  imagine  the  feeling  of 
the  energy  of  daily  life  applied  in  the  real  meaning  of 
those  words.  You  cannot  imagine  it,  but  you  can  prove  it. 
Are  any  of  you  willing,  simply  as  a  philosophical  experi- 
ment in  the  greatest  of  sciences,  to  adopt  the  principles 
and  feelings  of  these  men  of  a  thousand  years  ago  for  a 
given  time,  say  for  a  year  ?  It  cannot  possibly  do  you  any 
harm  to  try,  and  you  cannot  possibly  learn  what  is  true  in 
these  things,  without  trying.  If  after  a  year's  experience 
of  such  method  you  find  yourself  no  happier  than  before, 
at  least  you  will  be  able  to  support  your  present  opinions 
at  once  with  more  grace  and  more  modesty  ;  having  con- 
ceded the  trial  it  asked  for,  to  the  opposite  side.  Nor  in 
acting  temporarily  on  a  faith  you  do  not  see  to  be  reason- 
able, do  you  compromise  your  own  integrity  more,  than  in 
conducting,  under  a  chemist's  directions,  an  experiment  of 
which  he  foretells  inexplicable  consequences.  And  you  need 
not  doubt  the  power  you  possess  over  your  own  minds  to 
do  this.  Were  faith  not  voluntary,  it  could  not  be  praised, 
and  would  not  be  rewarded. 

59.  If  you  are  minded  thus  to  try,  begin  each  day  with 
Alfred's  prayer,— voluntas  tua ;  resolving  that  you  will 
stand  to  it,  and  that  nothing  that  happens  in  the  course  of 


II.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FAITH 


the  day  shall  displease  you.  Then  set  to  any  work  you 
have  in  hand  with  the  sifted  and  purified  resolution  that 
imbition  shall  not  mix  with  it,  nor  love  of  gain,  nor  desire 
)f  pleasure  more  than  is  appointed  for  you;  and  that  no 
mxiety  shall  touch  you  as  to  its  issue,  nor  any  impatience 
lor  regret  if  it  fail.  Imagine  that  the  thing  is  being  done 
hrough  you,  not  by  you;  that  the  good  of  it  may  never 
^e  known,  but  that  at  least,  unless  by  your  rebeihon  or 
jtbolishness,  there  can  come  no  evil  into  it,  nor  wrong  chance 
:o  it.  Resolve  also  with  steady  industry  to  do  what  you 
-an  for  the  help  of  your  country  and  its  honour,  and  the 
lonour  of  its  God;  and  that  you  will  not  join  hands  in  its 
niquity,  nor  turn  aside  from  its  misery;  and  that  in  all 
fou  do  and  feel  you  will  look  frankly  for  the  immediate 
lelp  and  direction,  and  to  your  own  consciences,  expressed 
ipproval,  of  God.  Live  thus,  and  believe,  and  with  swift- 
less  of  answer  proportioned  to  the  frankness  of  the  trust, 
nost  surely  the  God  of  hope  will  fill  you  with  all  joy  and 
oeace  in  believing.^ 

60.  But,  if  you  will  not  do  this,  if  you  have  not  courage 
iior  heart  enough  to  break  away  the  fetters  of  earth,  and 
ake  up  the  sensual  bed  of  it,  and  walk ;  ^  if  you  say  that 
70\i  are  bound  to  win  this  thing,  and  become  the  other 
:hing,  and  that  the  wishes  of  your  friends, — and  the  in- 
terests of  your  family, — and  the  bias  of  your  genius,— and 
-he  expectations  of  your  college, — and  all  the  rest  of  the 
bow-wow-wow  of  the  wild  dog-world,  must  be  attended  to, 
whether  you  like  it  or  no, — then,  at  least,  for  shame  give 
ip  talk  about  being  free  or  independent  creatures ;  recog- 
jiize  yourselves  for  slaves  in  whom  the  thoughts  are  put  in 
Waxd  with  their  bodies,  and  their  hearts  manacled  with 
:heir  hands :  and  then  at  least  also,  for  shame,  if  you  refuse 
:o  believe  that  ever  there  were  men  who  gave  their  souls 
:o  God, — know  and  confess  how  surely  there  are  those  who 
>ell  them  to  His  adversary. 


^  [Romans  xv.  13.] 

2  [See  Matthew  ix.  5,  6.] 


LECTURE  III 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED 
THE  CONFESSOR  TO  CCEUR  DE  LION 
ffj^  {Delivered  1st  and  3rd  November  1884) 

61.  It  was  my  endeavour,  in  the  preceding  lecture,  to  vin- 
dicate the  thoughts  and  arts  of  our  Saxon  ancestors  from 
whatever  scorn  might  he  couched  under  the  terms  appUed 
to  them  by  Dean  Stanley, — "fantastic,"  and  "childish."^ 
To-day  my  task  must  be  carried  forward,  first,  in  asserting 
the  grace  in  fantasy,  and  the  force  in  infancy,  of  the  Eng- 
lish mind,  before  the  Conquest,  against  the  allegations  con- 
tained in  the  final  passage  of  Dean  Stanley's  description  of 
the  first  founded  Westminster  ;  a  passage  which  accepts  and 
asserts,  more  distinctly  than  any  other  equally  brief  state- 
ment I  have  met  with,  the  to  my  mind  extremely  disputable 
theory,  that  the  Norman  invasion  was  in  every  respect  a 
sanitary,  moral,  and  intellectual  blessing  to  England,  and 
that  the  arrow  which  slew  her  Harold  was  indeed  the 
Arrow  of  the  Lord's  deliverance  :  ^ — 

''The  Abbey  itself,"  says  Dean  Stanley, — ''the  chief  work  of  the  Con- 
fessor's life, — was  the  portent  of  the  mighty  future.  When  Harold  stood 
beside  his  sister  Edith,  on  the  day  of  the  dedication,  and  signed  his  name 
with  hers  as  witness  to  the  Charter  of  the  Abbey,  he  might  have  seen 
that  he  was  sealing  his  own  doom,  and  preparing  for  his  own  destruction. 
The  solid  pillars,  the  ponderous  arches,  the  huge  edifice,  with  triple  tower 
and  sculptured  stones  and  storied  windows,  that  arose  in  the  place  and 
in  the  midst  of  the  humble  wooden  churches  and  wattled  tenements  of 
the  Saxon  period,  might  have  warned  the  nobles  who  were  present  that 
the  days  of  their  rule  were  numbered,  and  that  the  avenging,  civilizing, 


1  [See  above,  p.  448.] 

2  [2  Kings  xiii.  17.] 

458 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED  459 


stimulating  hand  of  another  and  a  mightier  race  was  at  work,  which  would 
change  the  whole  face  of  their  language,  their  manners,  their  Church,  and 
their  commonwealth.  The  Abbey,  so  far  exceeding  the  demands  of  the 
dull  and  stagnant  minds  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  ancestors,  was  founded  not  only 
in  faith,  but  in  hope:  in  the  hope  that  England  had  yet  a  glorious  career 
to  run;  that  the  line  of  her  sovereigns  would  not  be  broken,  even  when 
the  race  of  Alfred  had  ceased  to  reign."  ^ 

62.  There  must  surely  be  some  among  my  hearers  who 
are  startled,  if  not  offended,  at  bemg  told  in  the  terms 
which  I  emphasized  in  this  sentence,  that  the  minds  of  our 
Saxon  fathers  were,  although  fantastic,  dull,  and,  although 

i  childish,  stagnant ;  that  farther,  in  their  fantastic  stagna- 
tion, they  were  savage, — and  in  their  innocent  dulness, 
criminal;  so  that  the  future  character  and  fortune  of  the 
race  depended  on  the  critical  advent  of  the  didactic  and 
disciplinarian  Norman  baron,  at  once  to  polish  them,  stimu- 
late, and  chastise. 

63.  Before  I  venture  to  say  a  word  in  distinct  arrest 
of  this  judgment,  I  will  give  you  a  chart,  as  clear  as 
the  facts  observed  in  the  two  previous  lectures  allow,  of 
the  state  and  prospects  of  the  Saxons,  when  this  violent 
benediction  of  conquest  happened  to  them :  and  especially 
I  would  rescue,  in  the  measure  that  justice  bids,  the  memory 
even  of  their  Pagan  religion  from  the  general  scorn  in 
which  I  used  Carlyle's  description  of  the  idol  of  ancient 
Prussia  as  universally  exponent  of  the  temper  of  Northern 
devotion.^  That  Triglaph,  or  Triglyph  Idol,  (derivation  of 
Triglaph  wholly  unknown  to  me — I  use  Triglyph  only  for 
my  own  handiest  epithet,)  last  set  up,  on  what  is  now 
St.  Mary's  hill  in  Brandenburg,  in  1023,  belonged  indeed  to 
a  people  wonderfully  like  the  Saxons,— geographically  their 
close  neighbours, — in  habits  of  life,  and  aspect  of  native 
land,  scarcely  distinguishable  from  them,— in  Carlyle's  words, 

I  a  "  strong-boned,  iracund,  herdsman  and  fisher  people,  highly 
averse  to  be  interfered  with,  in  their  religion  especially," 
and  inhabiting  **a  moory  flat  country,  full  of  lakes  and 

^  [Historical  Memorials  of  Westminster  Ahhey,  pp.  29-30.] 
"  [See  above,  pp.  367,  426.] 


460         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


woods,  but  with  plenty  also  of  alluvial  mud,  grassy,  frugi- 
ferous,  apt  for  the  plough  "  ^ — in  all  things  hke  the  Saxons, 
except,  as  I  read  the  matter,  in  that  aversion  to  be  inter- 
fered with"  which  you  modern  English  think  an  especially 
Saxon  character  in  you, — but  which  is,  on  the  contrary, 
you  will  find  on  examination,  by  no  means  Saxon ;  but 
only  Wendisch,  Czech,  Serbic,  Sclavic, — other  hard  names 
I  could  easily  find  for  it  among  the  tribes  of  that  "  vehe- 
mently heathen "  old  Preussen  —  resolutely  worshipful  of 
"places  of  oak  trees,  of  wooden  or  stone  idols,  of  Bang- 
puttis,  PatkuUos,  and  I  know  not  what  diabolic  dumb 
blocks."  ^  Your  English  dislike  to  be  interfered  with "  is 
in  absolute  fellowship  with  these,  but  only  gathers  itself 
in  its  places  of  Stalks,  or  chimneys,  instead  of  oak  trees, 
round  its  idols  of  iron,  instead  of  wood,  diabolically  vocal 
now ;  strident,  and  sibilant,  instead  of  dumb. 

64.  Far  other  than  these,  their  neighbour  Saxons,  Jutes 
and  Angles ! — tribes  between  whom  the  distinctions  are  of 
no  moment  whatsoever,  except  that  an  English  boy  or 
girl  may  with  grace  remember  that  Old  England,"  exactly 
and  strictly  so  called,  was  the  small  district  in  the  extreme 
south  of  Denmark,  totally  with  its  islands  estimable  at 
sixty  miles  square  of  dead  flat  land.  Directly  south  of  it, 
the  definitely  so-called  Saxons  held  the  western  shore  of 
Holstein,  with  the  estuary  of  the  Elbe,  and  the  sea-mark 
isle,  Heligoland.  But  since  the  principal  temple  of  Saxon 
worship  was  close  to  Leipsic,^  we  may  include  under  our 
general  term,  Saxons,  the  inhabitants  of  the  whole  level 
district  of  North  Germany,  from  the  Gulf  of  Flensburg  to 
the  Hartz ;  and,  eastward,  all  the  country  watered  by  the 
Elbe  as  far  as  Saxon  Sv/itzerland, 

65.  Of  the  character  of  this  race  I  will  not  here  speak 
at  any  length :  only  note  of  it  this  essential  point,  that 

*  Turner,  vol.  i.  p.  223. 


1  [Friedrich,  Book  ii.  ch.  ii.  (vol.  i.  pp.  50,  49  (ed.  1869).] 

2  [Ibid.,  p.  51.] 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED  461 


heir  religion  was  at  once  more  practical  and  more  imagi- 
lative  than  that  of  the  Norwegian  peninsula;  the  Norse 
eligion  being  the  conception  rather  of  natm-al  than  moral 
)Owers,  but  the  Saxon,  primarily  of  moral,  as  the  lords  of 
iatural — ^their  central  divine  image,  Irminsul,^  holding  the 
tandard  of  peace  in  her  right  hand,  a  balance  in  her  left.^ 
»uch  a  religion  may  degenerate  into  mere  slaughter  and 
apine ;  but  it  has  the  making  in  it  of  the  noblest  men. 

More  practical  at  all  events,  whether  for  good  or  evil, 
Q  this  trust  in  a  future  reward  for  courage  and  purity, 
ban  the  mere  Scandinavian  awe  of  existing  Earth  and 
'loud,  the  Saxon  religion  was  also  more  imaginative,  in  its 
earer  conception  of  human  feeling  in  divine  creatures. 
Vnd  when  this  wide  hope  and  high  reverence  had  dis- 
inct  objects  of  worship  and  prayer,  offered  to  them  by 
'hristianity,  the  Saxons  easily  became  pure,  passionate,  and 
houghtful  Christians;  while  the  Normans,  to  the  last,  had 
he  greatest  difficulty  in  apprehending  the  Christian  teaching 
f  the  Franks,  and  still  deny  the  power  of  Christianity, 
ven  when  they  have  become  inveterate  in  its  form. 

Quite  the  deepest-thoughted  creatures  of  the  then  ani- 
late  world,  it  seems  to  me,  these  Saxon  ploughmen  of 
le  sand  or  the  sea,  with  their  worshipped  deity  of  Beauty 
id  Justice,  a  red  rose  on  her  banner,  for  best  of  gifts, 
id  in  her  right  hand,  instead  of  a  sword,  a  balance,  for 
ue  doom,  without  wrath, — of  retribution  in  her  left.  Far 
bher  than  the  Wends,  though  stubborn  enough,  they  too, 
I  battle  rank, — seven  times  rising  from  defeat  against 
lharlemagne,  and  unsubdued  but  by  death — yet,  by  no 
leans  in  that  John  Bull's  manner  of  yours,  "  averse  to  be 
iterfered  with,"  in  their  opinions,  or  their  religion.  Eagerly 
Dcile   on  the  contrary— joyfully  reverent— instantly  and 

*  Properly  plural  "  Images  " — Irminsul  and  Irminsula. 

1  [Sharon  Turner,  Histort/  of  England,  vol.  i.  (Anglo-Saxons),  1839:  "The  right 
iud  held  a  banner,  in  which  a  red  rose  was  conspicuous;  its  left  presented  a 
lance."] 


462         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


gratefully  acceptant  of  whatever  better  insight  or  oversight 
a  stranger  could  bring  them,  of  the  things  of  God  or  man. 

66.  And  let  me  here  ask  you  especially  to  take  account 
of  that  origin  of  the  true  bearing  of  the  Flag  of  England, 
the  Red  Rose.  Her  own  madness  defiled  afterwards  alike 
the  white  and  red,  into  images  of  the  paleness,  or  the 
crimson,  of  death ;  but  the  Saxon  Rose  was  the  symbol  of 
heavenly  beauty  and  peace. 

I  told  you  in  my  first  lecture^  that  one  swift  require- 
ment in  our  school  would  be  to  produce  a  beautiful  map 
of  England,  including  old  Northumberland,  giving  the  whole 
country,  in  its  real  geography,  between  the  Frith  of  Forth 
and  Straits  of  Dover,  and  with  only  six  sites  of  habitation 
given,  besides  those  of  Edinburgh  and  London, — namely, 
those  of  Canterbury  and  Winchester,  York  and  Lancaster, 
Holy  Island  and  Melrose;  the  latter  instead  of  lona,  be- 
cause, as  we  have  seen,^  the  influence  of  St.  Columba 
expires  with  the  advance  of  Christianity,  while  that  of 
Cuthbert  of  Melrose  connects  itself  with  the  most  sacred 
feelings  of  the  entire  Northumbrian  kingdom,  and  Scottish 
border,  down  to  the  days  of  Scott — wreathing  also  into  its 
circle  many  of  the  legends  of  Arthur. 

67.  Will  you  forgive  my  connecting  the  personal  memory 
of  having  once  had  a  wild  rose  gathered  for  me,  in  the 
glen  of  Thomas  the  Rhymer,  by  the  daughter  of  one  of 
the  few  remaining  Catholic  houses  of  Scotland,^  with  the 
pleasure  I  have  in  reading  to  you  this  following  true  account 
of  the  origin  of  the  name  of  St.  Cuthbert's  birthplace;— 

^  [The  passage  was,  however,  not  included  in  the  text,  having  been  an  im- 
promptu addition.    The  report  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  gives  it  as  follows  : — 

"Another  de[)artnient  of  historical  study,  by  the  way,  was  considerably 
simplified  by  Mr.  Ruskin,  in  some  informal  remarks,  after  the  conclusion 
of  his  written  lecture.  Map-making  is  only  tiresome  when  you  trouble 
yourself  about  railways  leading  from  one  unimportant  place  to  another ; 
but  in  drawing  the  map  of  England  and  Scotland,  for  instance,  you  should 
put  in  London,  and  Edinburgh,  and  I^ncaster  and  York  and  Winchester 
— and  nothing  else."] 

2  [See  above,  p.  439.] 

»  [On  July  3,  1867,  with  Miss  Mary  Kerr  (daughter  of  Lord  Henry  Kerr,  see 
Vol.  XIX,  p.  xxix.).    Compare  Pra'terita,  iii.  §  83.] 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED  463 


the  rather  because  I  owe  it  to  friendship  of  the  same  date, 
with  Mr.  Cockburn  Muir,  of  Melrose: — 

"To  those  who  have  eyes  to  read  it,"  says  Mr.  Muir,  "the  name 
*  Melrose '  is  written  full  and  fair,  on  the  fair  face  of  all  this  reach  of 
the  valley.  The  name  is  anciently  spelt  Mailros,  and  later,  Malros,  never 
Mulros;  Mul'  being  the  Celtic  word  taken  to  mean  *  bare ').  Ros  is 
Rose;  the  forms  Meal  or  Mol  imply  great  quantity  or  number.  Thus 
Malros  means  the  place  of  many  roses. 

"This  is  precisely  the  notable  characteristic  of  the  neighbourhood.  The 
wild  rose  is  indigenous.  There  is  no  nook  nor  cranny,  no  bank  nor 
brae,  which  is  not,  in  the  time  of  roses,  ablaze  with  their  exuberant 
loveliness.  In  gardens,  the  cultured  rose  is  so  prolific  that  it  spreads 
literally  like  a  weed.  But  it  is  worth  suggestion  that  the  word  may  be 
of  the  same  stock  as  the  Hebrew  rosh  (translated  ros  by  the  Septua- 
gint),  meaning  chief,  principal,  while  it  is  also  the  name  of  some  flower  ; 
but  of  which  flower  is  now  unknown.  Affinities  of  rosh  are  not  far  to  seek; 
Sanskrit,  Raj{a).    RaQa)ni ;  Latin,  Rex,  Reg(inay' 

I  leave  it  to  Professor  Max  Miiller  to  certify  or  correct 
for  you  the  details  of  Mr.  Cockburn's  research,^ — this  main 
head  of  it  I  can  positively  confirm,  that  in  old  Scotch, — 
that  of  Bishop  Douglas,^ — the  word  "  Rois  "  stands  alike  for 
King,  and  Rose.^ 

*  I  had  not  time  to  quote  it  fully  in  the  lecture;  and  in  my  ignorance, 
alike  of  Keltic  and  Hebrew,  can  only  submit  it  here  to  the  reader's 
examination.  "  The  ancient  Cognizance  of  the  town  confirms  this  etymology 
beyond  doubt,  with  customary  heraldic  precision.  The  shield  bears  a  Rose  ; 
with  a  Maul,  as  the  exact  phonetic  equivalent  for  the  expletive.  If  the 
herald  had  needed  to  express  ^bare  promontory,'  quite  certainly  he  would 
jhave  managed  it  somehow.  Not  only  this,  the  Earls  of  Haddington  were 
first  created  Earls  of  Melrose  (I619);  and  their  Shield,  quarterly,  is  charged, 
for  Melrose,  in  2nd  and  3rd  (fesse  wavy  between)  three  Roses  gu. 

"Beyond  this  ground  of  certainty,  we  may  indulge  in  a  little  excursus 
into  lingual  affinities  of  wide  range.  The  root  mol  is  clear  enough.  It  is 
of  the  same  stock  as  the  Greek  mala,  Latin  m.ul{tum),  and  Hebrew  m'la. 
But,  Rose  ?  We  call  her  Queen  of  Flowers,  and  since  before  the  Persian 
poets  made  much  of  her,  she  was  everywhere  Regina  Florum,  why  should 
not  the  name  mean  simply  the  Queen,  the  Chief.?  Now,  so  few  who 
know  Keltic  know  also  Hebrew,  and  so  few  who  know  Hebrew  know 
I  also  Keltic,  that  few  know  the  surprising  extent  of  the  affinity  that  exists 
— clear  as  day — between  the  Keltic  and  the  Hebrew  vocabularies.  That 
the  word  Rose  may  be  a  case  in  point  is  not  hazardously  speculative." 


1  [For  other  references  to  Gavin  Douglas,  Bishop  of  Dunkeld,  translator  of 
Virgil,  see  above,  p.  119  w.] 

2  [See  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  §  39  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 


464        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


68.  Summing  now  the  features  I  have  too  shortly  speci- 
fied in  the  Saxon  character, — its  imagination,  its  docility, 
its  love  of  knowledge,  and  its  love  of  beauty,  you  will  be 
prepared  to  accept  my  conclusive  statement,  that  they  gave 
rise  to  a  form  of  Christian  faith  which  appears  to  me,  in 
the  present  state  of  my  knowledge,  one  of  the  purest  and 
most  intellectual  ever  attained  in  Christendom ; — never  yet 
understood,  partly  because  of  the  extreme  rudeness  of  its] 
expression  in  the  art  of  manuscripts,  and  partly  because,  on 
account  of  its  very  purity,  it  sought  no  expression  in  archi- 
tecture, being  a  religion  of  daily  life,  and  humble  lodging. 
For  these  two  practical  reasons,  first; — and  for  this  more 
weighty  third,  that  the  intellectual  character  of  it  is  at  the 
same  time  most  truly,  as  Dean  Stanley  told  you,  childhke; 
showing  itself  in  swiftness  of  imaginative  apprehension,  and 
in  the  fearlessly  candid  application  of  great  principles  to 
small  things.  Its  character  in  this  kind  may  be  instantly 
felt  by  any  sympathetic  and  gentle  person  who  will  read 
carefully  the  book  I  have  already  quoted  to  you,^  the 
Venerable  Bede's  life  of  St.  Cuthbert;  and  the  intensity 
and  sincerity  of  it  in  the  highest  orders  of  the  laity,  by 
simply  counting  the  members  of  Saxon  Royal  families  who 
ended  their  lives  in  monasteries.- 

69.  Now,  at  the  very  moment  when  this  faith,  innocence, 
and  ingenuity  were  on  the  point  of  springing  up  into  their 
fruitage,  comes  the  Northern  invasion;  of  the  real  character 
of  which  you  can  gain  a  far  truer  estimate  by  studying 
Alfred's  former  resolute  contest  with  and  victory  over  the 
native  Norman  ^  in  his  paganism,  than  by  your  utmost 
endeavours  to  conceive  the  character  of  the  afterwards 
invading  Norman,  disguised,  but  not  changed,  by  Chris- 
tianity.    The  Norman  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  him,  j 

1  [See  above,  p.  450.]  ^  j 

"  [See,  on  this  subject.  Book  xiii.  ch.  v.  in  Montalembert's  Moines  d'Occident: 

^'Certain  annalists  even  go  so  far  as  to  count  more  than  thirty  kings  or  queens 

of  the  different  Anglo-Saxon  kingdoms  who  entered  the  cloisters  during  the  seventh 
and  eighth  centuries  "  (p.  10(3,  vol.  iii.,  in  the  portion  of  the  book  translated  under 
the  title  The  Conversion  of  England).'] 
'  [See  below,  p.  471.] 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED  465 


become  a  Christian  at  all ;  and  he  never  did ; — he  only 
became,  at  his  best,  the  enemy  of  the  Saracen.  What  he 
was,  and  what  alone  he  was  capable  of  being,  I  will  try 
to-day  to  explain. 

70.  And  here  I  must  advise  you  that  in  all  points  of 
history  relating  to  the  period  between  800  and  1200,  you 
will  find  M.  VioUet-le-Duc,  incidentally  throughout  his 
Dictionary  of  Architecture,  the  best-informed,  most  intelli- 
gent, and  most  thoughtful  of  guides.  His  knowledge  of 
architecture,  carried  down  into  the  most  minutely  practical 
details, — (which  are  often  the  most  significant,)  and  embrac- 
ing, over  the  entire  surface  of  France,  the  buildings  even  of 
!the  most  secluded  villages;  his  artistic  enthusiasm,  balanced 
by  the  acutest  sagacity,  and  his  patriotism,  by  the  frankest 
candour,  render  his  analysis  of  history  during  that  active 
iand  constructive  period  the  most  valuable  known  to  me, 
and  certainly,  in  its  field,  exhaustive.  Of  the  later  nation- 
ality his  account  is  imperfect,  owing  to  his  professional  in- 
terest in  the  mere  science  of  architecture,  and  comparative 
insensibility  to  the  power  of  sculpture; — but  of  the  time 
with  which  we  are  now  concerned,  whatever  he  tells  you 
must  be  regarded  with  grateful  attention. 

71.  I  introduce,  therefore,  the  Normans  to  you,  on 
their  first  entering  France,  under  his  descriptive  terms  of 
them :  ^ — 

"As  soon  as  they  were  established  on  the  soil,  these  barbarians  became 
the  most  hardy  and  active  builders.  Within  the  space  of  a  century  and  a 
half,  they  had  covered  the  country  on  which  they  had  definitely  landed,. 
|with  religious,  monastic,  and  civil  edifices,  of  an  extent  and  richness  then 
little  common.  It  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  they  had  brought  from 
Norway  the  elements  of  art,!  but  they  were  possessed  by  a  persisting 
and  penetrating  spirit;  their  brutal  force  did  not  want  for  grandeur. 
Conquerors,  they  raised  castles  to  assure  their  domination ;  they  soon 
recognized  the  Moral  force  of  the  clergy,  and  endowed  it  richly.  Eager 
always  to  attain  their  end,  when  once  they  saw  it,  they  never  left  one  of 
their  enterprises  unfinished,  and  in  that  they  differed  completely  from  the 

*  Article  "Architecture,"  vol.  i.  p.  138. 

t  They  had  brought  some,  of  a  variously  Charybdic,  Serpentine,  and 
Diabolic  character. — ^J.  R. 

XXXIII.  2  ^ 


466         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

Southern  inhabitants  of  Gaul.  Tenacious  extremely,  they  were  perhaps 
the  only  ones  among  the  barbarians  established  in  France  who  had  ideas 
of  order ;  the  only  ones  who  knew  how  to  preserve  their  conquests,  and 
compose  a  state.  They  found  the  remains  of  the  Carthaginian  arts  on 
the  territory  where  they  planted  themselves,  they  mingled  with  those 
their  national  genius,  positive,  grand,  and  yet  supple." 

72.  Supple,  "  Delie," — capable  of  change  and  play  of 
the  mental  muscle,  in  the  way  that  savages  are  not.  I  do 
not,  myself,  grant  this  suppleness  to  the  Norman,  the  less 
because  another  sentence  of  M.  le  Due's,  occurring  incident-  ! 
ally  in  his  account  of  the  archivolt,  is  of  extreme  counter-  ' 
significance,  and  wide  application.  "  The  Norman  arch," 
lie  says,  is  never  derived  from  traditional  classic  forms, 
l)ut  only  from  mathematical  arrangement  of  line."  Yes; 
that  is  true :  the  Norman  arch  is  never  derived  from  classic 
forms.^  The  cathedral,"^  whose  aisles  you  saw  or  might 
have    seen,   yesterday,   interpenetrated   with   light,  whose 

*  Of  Oxford,  during  the  afternoon  service. 


^  [In  the  MS.  notes  for  this  lecture  is  the  following  additional  passage : — 

^'1  have  shown  you,  in  last  lecture,  the  relations  of  Charlemagne  and 
France,  to  Alfred  and  England. 

"In  the  present  one,  I  have  next  to  trace  with  you  the  interference 
of  the  power  of  Norway  with  both,  and  the  influence  on  eai^h  side  of  the 
Channel,  of  this  mountain  and  ice-bred  race  on  the  two  southern  ones ; 
influence,  however,  which  virtually  ends  for  both  French  and  English 
with  the  death  of  Coeur  de  Lion — as  for  the  Italians  with  that  of  Robert 
Guiscard. 

^^My  first  business,  in  approaching  the  evidence  on  this  matter  pre- 
sented by  English  art,  must  be  to  extricate  you  from  the  confusion  in 
which  the  general  term  Romanesque  has  involved  the  various  schools  of 
round  arched  building  which  were  developed  in  the  eleventh  and  twelfth 
century.  Take  the  Roman  basilica  for  the  type  of  round  arched  work 
which  is  the  root  of  all.  In  the  East  of  the  Empire,  at  Constantinople, 
Venice,  and  Ravenna  as  at  Rome  itself,  that  basilica  becomes,  in  the 
hands  of  Greek  mosaic  workers,  variously  aisled  and  vaulted,  a  mystery 
of  gold  and  colour  ;  structurally  without  anything  that  can  be  called 
either  science  or  law  ;  and  having  no  likeness  to,  or  relation  to,  any 
form  or  idea  of  Norman  work. 

"  Keep  that  Eastern  school — generally  and  properly  called  Byzantine — 
totally  separate  in  your  minds  from  anything  you  find  contemporary  with 
it  in  France  and  England. 

''Next  to  it,  and  between  it  and  you,  comes  the  round  arched  school 
of  the  Lombards ;  the  treatment,  by  one  of  the  strongest  and  most  imagi- 
native of  North  European  races,  of  the  same  material  of  design  presented 
to  them  by  the  Roman  circus  and  basilica — but  with  this  enormous  dis- 
tinction, that  the  Lombards  cannot  paint  nor  set  mosaic.  Eagerly,  there- 
fore, they  took  up  the  decoration  which  may  be  substituted  for  these,  in 
bas-relief    They  develop  splendid  powers  of  animal  sculpture,  and  produce 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED  467 


vaults  you  might  have  heard  prolonging  the  sweet  divisions 
of  majestic  sound,  would  have  been  built  in  that  stately 
symmetry  by  Norman  law,  though  never  an  arch  at  Rome 
had  risen  round  her  field  of  blood, — though  never  her 
Subhcian  bridge  ^  had  been  petrified  by  her  Augustan  ponti- 
fices.  But  the  decoration,  though  not  the  structure  of  those 
arches,  they  owed  to  another  race,'^  whose  words  they  stole 
without  understanding,  though  three  centuries  before,  the 
Saxon  understood,  and  used,  to  express  the  most  solemn 
majesty  of  his  Kinghood, — 

"EGO  EDGAR,  TOTIVS  ALBIONIS"— 

not  Rex,  that  would  have  meant  the  King  of  Kent  or 
IMercia,  not  of  England, — no,  nor  Imperator;  that  would 

*  See  the  concluding  section  of  the  lecture. 

the  architecture  of  which  I  have  so  long  been  urging  you  to  study  the 
leading  examples  at  Milan,  Pavia,  Verona,  Arezzo,  and  Assisi. 

"  Yet  these  buildings  have  no  more  connection  with,  or  influence  upon, 
your  Norman  work  than  the  Byzantine.  They  are  utterly  independent 
of  both,  but  they  have  many  qualities  in  common  with  the  Norman 
(while  the  Byzantine  school  has  none)  of  which  the  foundational  one  is 
their  perfection  in  structural  and  mechanical  art,  and  the  governing  one, 
a  fierce  and  exuberant  vital  energy — extremely  disdainful  of  all  that  we 
now  understand  by  grace,  or  delicate  beauty.  But  because  Normans  and 
Lombards  are  alike  good  builders,  and  alike  careless  of  beauty,  and  lovers 
of  action  ;  able  therefore  to  carve  dragons  and  lions,  but  not  Margarets 
or  Unas — do  not  allow  yourselves  to  associate  for  a  moment  the  two 
schools  in  your  minds.  Holy  Island  Cathedral  would  have  been  built 
exactly  as  it  is,  though  no  Lombard  had  ever  passed  the  Alps  ;  and  the 
Duomo  of  Verona  would  have  been  built  exactly  as  it  is,  though  no  North- 
men had  ever  crossed  the  sea. 

"You  have  Etruscan  Romanesque,  the  round  arched  work  of  Tuscany, 
and  with  hers — not  to  plague  with  too  many  divisions — take  that  of  the 
native  Gaul  in  South  France,  transitional  gradually  on  its  native  soil  from 
the  forms  received  by  it  under  Roman  dominion ;  and  this  is  still  wholly 
independent  of  your  Norman  work,  and  in  many  respects  has  less  in 
common  with  it  than  the  Lombard.  But  this  native  round  arched  style 
being  taken  up  by  the  Franks,  when  they  drive  out  the  Visigoths,  the 
result  is— the  Cathedral  of  Chartres  ;  and  being  taken  up  by  the  Normans 
when  they  invade  the  Franks,  the  result  is— the  Cathedral  of  Durham. 

"Now  therefore,  for  our  present  purpose,  put  Byzantine  work  out  of 
your  heads,  thrust  aside  Lombard,  Etruscan,  aad  French  with  equal 
decision,  and  fix  your  attention  on  the  style  only  which  was  developed  by 
the  men  of  Scandinavia,  in  the  district  they  conquered  between  the  Loire 
and  Seine,  and  afterwards,  similarly,  by  right  of  conquest,  over  the  whole 
of  Saxon  and  Northumbrian  England."] 
^  [For  the  Pons  Sublicius,  the  pile-bridge  built  across  the  Tiber  by  Ancus 
^arcius,  see  Livy,  i.  33,  ii.  10.    Compare  Ara  Coeli,  §  4 ;  above,  p  195.] 


468         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

have  meant  only  the  profane  power  of  Rome,  but 
BASILEVS,^  meaning  a  King  who  reigned  with  sacred 
authority  given  by  Heaven  and  Christ. 

73.  With  far  meaner  thoughts,  both  of  themselves  and 
their  powers,  the  Normans  set  themselves  to  build  im- 
pregnable military  walls,  and  sublime  religious  ones,  in  the 
best  possible  practical  ways ;  but  they  no  more  made  books 
of  their  church  fronts  than  of  their  bastion  flanks;  andl 
cared,  in  the  religion  they  accepted,  neither  for  its  senti=i 
ments  nor  its  promises,  but  only  for  its  immediate  results^ 
on  national  order. 

As  I  read  them,  they  were  men  wholly  of  this  world, 
bent  on  doing  the  most  in  it,  and  making  the  best  of  it 
that  they  could ; — men,  to  their  death,  of  Deed,  never 
pausing,  changing,  repenting,  or  anticipating,  more  than  the 
completed  square,  avev  of  their  battle,  their  keep,  and 

their  cloister.  Soldiers  before  and  after  everything,  they 
learned  the  lockings  and  bracings  of  their  stones  primarily 
in  defence  against  the  battering-ram  and  the  projectile,  and 
esteemed  the  pure  circular  arch  for  its  distributed  and  equal 
strength  more  than  for  its  beauty.  "  I  believe  again,"  says 
M.  le  Duc,^  *'that  the  feudal  castle  never  arrived  at  its 
perfectness  till  after  the  Norman  invasion,  and  that  this 
race  of  the  North  was  the  first  to  apply  a  defensive  system 
under  unquestionable  laws,  soon  followed  by  the  nobles  of 
the  Continent,  after  they  had,  at  their  own  expense,  learned 
their  superiority."  I 

74.  The  next  sentence  is  a  curious  one.  I  pray  your 
attention  to  it.  "The  defensive  system  of  the  Norman  is 
born  of  a  profound  sentiment  of  distrust  and  cunning, 
foreign  to  the  character  of  the  Frank''  You  will  find  in 
all  my  previous  notices  of  the  French,  continual  insistence 
upon  their  natural  Franchise,^  and  also,  if  you  take  the 

♦  Article  "Chateau,"  vol.  iii.  p.  65. 

^  [For  a  note  by  Ruskiii  on  this  word,  see  above,  p.  414.] 
^   Tcrpdyiavos  avev  ylroyov  I  Aristotle^  Ethics,  i.  11,  11.] 
3  [See  above,  pp.  60-61,  68.] 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED 


least  pains  in  analysis  of  their  literature  down  to  this  day, 
that  the  idea  of  falseness  is  to  them  indeed  more  hate- 
ful than  to  any  other  European  nation.  To  take  a  quite 
cardinal  instance.  If  you  compare  Lucian's  and  Shake- 
speare's Timon  with  MoHere's  Alceste,  you  will  find  the 
Greek  and  English  misanthropes  dwell  only  on  men's  in- 
gratitude to  themselves,  but  Alceste,  on  their  falsehood  to 
each  other} 

Now  hear  M.  le  Due  farther : — 

''The  castles  built  between  the  tenth  and  twelfth  centuries  along  the 
Loire,  Gironde,  and  Seine,  that  is  to  say,  along  the  lines  of  the  Norman 
invasions,  and  in  the  neighbourhood  of  their  possessions,  have  a  peculiar 
and  uniform  character  which  one  finds  neither  in  central  France,  nor  in 
Burgundy,  nor  can  there  be  any  need  for  us  to  throw  light  on  (faire 
ressortir)  the  superiority  of  the  warrior  spirit  of  the  Normans,  during"  the 
later  times  of  the  Carlovingian  epoch,  over  the  spirit  of  the  chiefs  of 
Frank  descent,  established  on  the  Gallo-Roman  soil." 

There's  a  bit  of  honesty  in  a  Frenchman  for  you  ! 

75.  I  have  just  said  that  they  valued  religion  chiefly 
for  its  influence  of  order  in  the  present  world :  being  in 
this,  observe,  as  nearly  as  may  be  the  exact  reverse  of 
modern  believers,  or  persons  who  profess  to  be  such,— of 
whom  it  may  be  generally  alleged,  too  truly,  that  they 
value  religion  with  respect  to  their  future  bliss  rather  than 
I  their  present  duty;  and  are  therefore  continually  careless 
of  its  direct  commands,  with  easy  excuse  to  themselves  for 
j  disobedience  to  them.  Whereas  the  Norman,  finding  in  his 
own  heart  an  irresistible  impulse  to  action,  and  perceiving 
himself  to  be  set,  with  entirely  strong  body,  brain,  and 
will,  in  the  midst  of  a  weak  and  dissolute  confusion  of  all 
things,  takes  from  the  Bible  instantly  into  his  conscience 
every  exhortation  to  Do  and  to  Govern  ;  and  becomes,  with 
all  his  might  and  understanding,  a  blunt  and  rough  servant, 
[knecht,  or  knight  of  God,  liable  to  much  misapprehension, 
of  course,  as  to  the  services  immediately  required  of  him, 

^  [To  Lucian's  dialogue  Timon  (from  which,  indirectly,  much  of  the  material  for 
the  play  attributed  to  Shakespeare  is  derived),  Ruskin  makes  passing  reference  in 
Vol.  XIX.  p.  119  n.  For  references  to  Moliere's  Misanthrope,  see  Vol.  V.  p.  375 
and  n.,  and  Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  62  (Marmontel's  continuation  of  the  story).] 


470         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


but  supposing,  since  the  whole  make  of  him,  outside  and 
in,  is  a  soldier  s,  that  God  meant  him  for  a  soldier,  and 
that  he  is  to  establish,  by  main  force,  the  Christian  faith  j| 
and  works  all  over  the  world  so  far  as  he  comprehends 
them;  not  merely  with  the  Mahometan  indignation  against 
spiritual  error,  but  with  a  sound  and  honest  soul's  dislike  | 
of  material  error,  and  resolution  to  extinguish  that,  even  if 
perchance  found  in  the  spiritual  persons  to  whom,  in  their 
office,  he  yet  rendered  total  reverence. 

76.  Which  force  and  faith  in  him  I  may  best  illustrate 
by  merely  putting  together  the  broken  paragraphs  of  Sis- 
mondi's  account^  of  the  founding  of  the  Norman  King- 
dom of  Sicily:  virtually  contemporary  with  the  conquest  of 
England  : — 

^'The  Normans  surpassed  all  the  races  of  the  west  in  their  ardour  for 
pilgrimages.  They  would  not,  to  go  into  the  Holy  Land,  submit  to  the 
monotony  *  of  a  long  sea  voyage — the  rather  that  they  found  not  on  the 
Mediterranean  the  storms  or  dangers  they  had  rejoiced  to  encounter  on 
their  own  sea.  They  traversed  by  land  the  whole  of  France  and  Italy, 
trusting  to  their  swords  to  procure  the  necessary  subsistence,!  if  the 
charity  of  the  faithful  did  not  enough  provide  for  it  with  alms.  The 
towns  of  Naples,  Amalfi,  Gaeta,  and  Bari,  held  constant  commerce  with 
Syria ;  and  frequent  miracles,  it  was  believed,  illustrated  the  Monte 
Cassino,  (St.  Benedict  again  !)  on  the  road  of  Naples,  and  the  Mount  of 
Angels  (Garganus)  above  Bari."  (Querceta  Gargani — verily,  laborant;^ 
nojv,  et  orant.)  "The  pilgrims  wished  to  visit  during  their  journey  the 
monasteries  built  on  these  two  mountains,  and  therefore  nearly  always, 
either  going  or  returning  to  the  Holy  Land,  passed  through  Magna  Graecia. 

"  In  one  of  the  earliest  years  of  the  eleventh  century,  about  forty  of 
these  religious  travellers,  having  returned  from  the  Holy  Land,  chanced  to 
have  met  together  in  Salerno  at  the  moment  when  a  small  Saracen  fleet 
came  to  insult  the  town,  and  demand  of  it  a  military  contribution.  The 
inhabitants  of  South  Italy,  at  this  time,  abandoned  to  the  delights  of 
their  enchanted  climate,  had  lost  nearly  all  military  courage.  The  Salerni- 
tani  saw  with  astonishment  forty  Norman  knights,  after  having  demanded 
horses  and  arms  from  the  Prince  of  Salerno,  order  the  gates  of  the  town 

*  I  give  Sismondi's  idea  as  it  stands,  but  there  was  no  question  in 
the  matter  of  monotony  or  of  danger.  The  journey  was  made  on  foot 
because  it  was  the  most  laborious  way,  and  the  most  humble. 

t  See  farther  on,  §  80,  the  analogies  with  English  arrangements  of  the 
same  kind  [pp.  472-473]. 

1  [Ch.  iv.  ;  vol.  i.  pp.  253-255,  in  the  French  ed.,  1826.] 

2  [Horace,  Odes,  ii.  9,  7.] 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED 


!  to  be  opened,  charge  the  Saracens  fearlessly,  and  put  them  to  flight. 
The  Salernitani  followed,  however,  the  example  given  them  by  these  brave 
warriors,  and  those  of  the  Mussulmans  who  escaped   their  swords  were 

i  forced  to  re-embark  in  all  haste." 

77.  The  Prince  of  Salerno,  Guaimar  III.,  tried  in  vain  to 
keep  the  warrior-pilgrims  at  his  court :  but  at  his  solicita- 

I  tion  other  companies  established  themselves  on  the  rocks  of 
I  Salerno  and  Amalfi,  until,  on  Christmas  Day,  1041,^  (exactly 
1  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  the  coronation  here  at  West- 
I  minster  of  the  Conqueror,)  they  gathered  their  scattered 
forces  at  Aversa,^  twelve  groups  of  them  under  twelve 
chosen  counts,   and   all  under  the  Lombard   Ardoin,  as 
commander-in-chief.  ^ 

Be  so  good  as  to  note  that, — a  marvellous  key-note  of 
historical   fact   about  the  unjesting  Lombards.    I  cannot 
find  the  total  Norman  number :  the  chief  contingent,  under 
William  of  the  Iron  Arm,  the  son  of  Tancred  of  Haute- 
ville,  was  only  of  three  hundred  knights;  the  Count  of 
Aversa's  troop,  of  the  same  number,  is  named  as  an  im- 
I  portant  part  of  the  little  army — admit  it  for  ten  times 
Tancred's,  three  thousand  men  in  all.    At  Aversa,  these 
three  thousand  men  form,  coolly  on  Christmas  Day,  1041, 
!  the  design  of — well,  I  told  you  they  didn't  design  much, 
only,  now  we're  here,  we  may  as  well,  while  we're  about 
i  it, — overthrow  the  Greek  empire  !    That  was  their  little 
I  game  ! — a  Christmas  mumming  to  purpose.    The  following 
year,  the  whole  of  Apulia  was  divided  among  them. 

78.  I  will  not  spoil,  by  abstracting,  the  magnificent 
following  history  of  Robert  Guiscard,^  the  most  wonderful 
soldier  of  that  or  any  other  time :  ^  I  leave  you  to  finish 
it  for  yourselves,  only  asking  you  to  read  together  with 
it,  the  sketch,  in  Turner's  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,^ 

*  In  Lombardy,  south  of  Pavia. 

*  [See  below,  p.  480.] 

'  [§  77  down  to  this  point  is  summarised  from  Sismondi,  p.  261.] 
3  [See  Sismondi,  ch.  iv. ;  vol.  i.  pp.  268-278.] 

*  [For  other  references  to  Guiscard  in  a  like  sense,  see  Vol.  XXIV.  pp.  270,  274.] 
5  {History  of  England,  Book  iv.  ch.  xi.  ;  vol.  i.  pp.  577  seq.] 


472         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

of  Alfred's  long  previous  war  with  the  Norman  Hasting ; 
pointing  out  to  you  for  foci  of  character  in  each  contest, 
the  culminating  incidents  of  naval  battle.  In  Guiscard's  j 
struggle  with  the  Greeks,  he  encounters  for  their  chief 
naval  force  the  Venetian  fleet  under  the  Doge  Domenico 
Selvo.^  The  Venetians  are  at  this  moment  undoubted' 
masters  in  all  naval  warfare ;  the  Normans  are  worsted 
easily  the  first  day, — the  second  day,  fighting  harder,  they 
are  defeated  again,  and  so  disastrously  that  the  Venetian 
Doge  takes  no  precautions  against  them  on  the  third  day, 
thinking  them  utterly  disabled.  Guiscard  attacks  him  again 
on  the  third  day,  with  the  mere  wreck  of  his  own  ships, 
and  defeats  the  tired  and  amazed  Italians  finally ! 

79.  The  sea-fight  between  Alfred's  ships  and  those  of 
Hasting  ought  to  be  still  more  memorable  to  us.  Alfred, 
as  I  noticed  in  last  lecture,^  had  built  war  ships  nearly 
twice  as  long  as  the  Normans',  swifter,  and  steadier  on 
the  waves.  Six  Norman  ships  were  ravaging  the  Isle  of 
Wight ;  Alfred  sent  nine  of  his  own  to  take  them.  The 
King's  fleet  found  the  Northmen's  embayed,  and  three  of 
them  aground.  The  three  others  engaged  Alfreds  nine, 
twice  their  size ;  two  of  the  Viking  ships  were  taken,  but 
the  .third  escaped,  with  only  five  men!^  A  nation  which 
verily  took  its  pleasures  in  its  Deeds. 

80.  But  before  I  can  illustrate  farther  either  their  deeds 
or  their  religion,  I  must  for  an  instant  meet  the  objection 
which  I  suppose  the  extreme  probity  of  the  nineteenth 
century  must  feel  acutely  against  these  men, — that  they  all 
lived  by  thieving. 

Without  venturing  to  allude  to  the  raison  d'etre  of  the 
present  French  and  English  Stock  Exchanges,  I  will  merely 
ask  any  of  you  here,  whether  of  Saxon  or  Norman  blood, 
to  define  for  himself  what  he  means  by  the  "possession  of 

^  [Compare  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  274  n. ;  and  see  Romanin's  Storia  Documentata  di 
Venezia,  vol.  i.  p.  323.  In  the  lecture  as  delivered,  Riiskin  gave  the  name  of  the 
doge  wrongly  as  Pietro  Orseolo  (see  below,  p.  481  n.),] 

2  [See  above,  p.  442.] 

'  [See  Sharon  Turner,  vol.  i.  p.  596.] 


f 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED 


I  India."  I  have  no  doubt  that  you  all  wish  to  keep  India 
in  order,  and  in  like  manner  I  have  assured  ^^ou  that 
Duke  William  wished  to  keep  England  in  order.  If  you 
will  read  the  lecture  on  the  life  of  Sir  Herbert  Edwardes, 
which  I  hope  to  give  in  London  after  finishing  this 
course,*^  you  will  see  how  a  Christian  British  officer  can, 
and  does,  verily,  and  with  his  whole  heart,  keep  in  order 
such  part  of  India  as  may  be  entrusted  to  him,  and  in 
so  doing,  secure  our  Empire.    But  the  silent  feeling  and 

i  practice  of  the  nation  about  India  is  based  on  quite  other 
motives  than  Sir  Herbert's.  Every  mutiny,  every  danger, 
every  terror,  and  every  crime,  occurring  under,  or  paralyz- 
ing, our  Indian  legislation,  arises  directly  out  of  our  national 
desire  to  live  on  the  loot  of  India,  and  the  notion  always 
entertained  by  English  young  gentlemen  and  ladies  of  good 
position,  falling  in  love  with  each  other  without  immediate 

1  prospect  of  establishment  in  Belgrave  Square,  that  they  can 
find  in  India,  instantly  on  landing,  a  bungalow  ready  fur- 
nished with  the  loveliest  fans,  china,  and  shawls, — ices  and 
sherbet  at  command, — four-and-twenty  slaves  succeeding  each 
other  hourly  to  swing  the  punkah,  and  a  regiment  with  a 
beautiful  band  to  "  keep  order "  outside,  all  round  the  house. 

81.  Entreating  your  pardon  for  what  may  seem  rude 
in  these  personal  remarks,  I  will  further  entreat  you  to 
read  my  account  of  the  death  of  Coeur  de  Lion  in  the 
third  number  of  Fors  Clavigera^- — and  also  the  scenes  in 
Ivanhoe  between  Coeur  de  Lion  and  Locksley;  and  com- 
mending these  few  passages  to  your  quiet  consideration, 
I  proceed  to  give  you  another  anecdote  or  two  of  the 
Normans  in  Italy,  twelve  years  later  than  those  given 
above,  and,  therefore,  only  thirteen  years  before  the  battle 
of  Hastings. 

*  This  was  prevented  by  the  necessity  for  the  re-arrangement  of  my 
terminal  Oxford  lectures :  I  am  now  preparing  that  on  Sir  Herbert  for 
publication  in  a  somewhat  expanded  form.^ 

1  [See  Vol.  XXVII.  pp.  53-59  ;  and  chapters  82,  83,  40,  and  41  of  Ivanhoe.] 

2  [See  now  Bibliotheca  Pastorum,  vol.  iv. :  A  Knight's  Faith  (Vol.  XXXII.).] 


474         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

Their  division  of  South  Italy  among  them  especially, 
and  their  defeat  of  Venice,  had  alarmed  everybody  con- 
siderably,— especially  the  Pope,  Leo  IX.,  who  did  not 
understand  this  manifestation  of  their  piety.  He  sent  to 
Henry  III.  of  Germany,  to  whom  he  owed  his  Popedom, 
for  some  German  knights,  and  got  five  hundred  spears; 
gathered  out  of  all  Apulia,  Campania,  and  the  March 
of  Ancona,  what  Greek  and  Latin  troops  were  to  be  had, 
to  join  his  own  army  of  the  patrimony  of  St.  Peter;  and 
the  holy  Pontiff,  with  this  numerous  army,  but  no  general, 
began  the  campaign  by  a  pilgrimage  with  all  his  troops  to 
Monte  Cassino,  in  order  to  obtain,  if  it  might  be,  St. 
Benedict  for  general.^ 

82.  Against  the  Pope's  collected  masses,  with  St.  Bene- 
dict, their  contemplative  but  at  first  inactive  general,  stood 
the  little  army  of  Normans, — certainly  not  more  than  the 
third  of  their  number — but  with  Robert  Guiscard  for  cap- 
tain, and  under  him  his  brother,  Humphrey  of  Hauteville, 
and  Richard  of  Aversa.  Not  in  fear,  but  in  devotion,  they 
prayed  the  Pope  "  avec  instance," " — to  say  on  what  condi- 
tions they  could  appease  his  anger,  and  live  in  peace  under 
him.  But  the  Pope  would  hear  of  nothing  but  their 
evacuation  of  Italy.  Whereupon,  they  had  to  settle  the 
question  in  the  Norman  manner. 

The  two  armies  met  in  front  of  Civitella,  on  Waterloo 
day,  18th  June,  thirteen  years,  as  I  said,  before  the  battle 
of  Hastings.  The  German  knights  were  the  heart  of  the 
Pope's  army,  but  they  were  only  five  hundred ;  the  Normans 
surrounded  them  first,  and  slew  them,  nearly  to  a  man — 
and  then  made  extremely  short  work  with  the  Italians  and 
Greeks.  The  Pope,  with  the  wreck  of  them,  fled  into 
Civitella ;  but  the  townspeople  dared  not  defend  their  walls, 
and  thrust  the  Pope  himself  out  of  their  gates — to  meet, 
alone,  the  Norman  army. 

^  [See  Sismondi,  pp.  264-265  :  "  pour  obtenir  la  benediction  du  ciel  sur  ces 
armes,"  as  quoted  above.] 
2  [Sismondi,  p.  266.] 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED  475 


He  met  it,  not  alone,  St.  Benedict  being  with  him  now, 
when  he  had  no  longer  the  strength  of  man  to  trust  in. 

The  Normans,  as  they  approached  him,  threw  them- 
selves on  their  knees, — covered  themselves  with  dust,  and 
implored  his  pardon  and  his  blessing.^ 

83.  There's  a  bit  of  poetry — if  you  like,— but  a  piece 
of  steel-clad  fact  also,  compared  to  which  the  battles  of 
[Hastings  and  Waterloo,  both,  were  mere  boys'  squabbles. 

I  You  don't  suppose,  you  British  schoolboys,  that  you 
i overthrew  Napoleon — you?  Your  Prime  Minister  folded  up 
the  map  of  Europe  at  the  thought  of  him.^  Not  you,  but 
I  the  snows  of  Heaven,  and  the  hand  of  Him  who  dasheth 
I  in  pieces  with  a  rod  of  iron.  He  casteth  forth  His  ice 
like  morsels, — who  can  stand  before  His  cold?^ 

But,  so  far  as  you  have  indeed  the  right  to  trust  in 
the  courage  of  your  own  hearts,  remember  also — it  is  not 
jin  Norman  nor  Saxon,  but  in  Celtic  race  that  your  real 
j  strength  lies.  The  battles  both  of  Waterloo  and  Alma  were 
won  by  Irish  and  Scots — by  the  terrible  Scots  Greys,  and  by 
Sir  Colin's  Highlanders.  Your  "thin  red  line"  was  kept 
steady  at  Alma  only  by  Colonel  Yea's  swearing  at  them/ 

84.  But  the  old  Pope,  alone  against  a  Norman  army, 
wanted  nobody  to  swear  at  him.  Steady  enough  he,  having 
somebody  to  bless  him,  instead  of  swear  at  him.  St.  Bene- 
dict, namely ;  whose  (memory  shall  we  say  ?)  helped  him 

j  now  at  his  pinch  in  a  singular  manner, — for  the  Normans, 
I  having  got  the  old  man's  forgiveness,  vowed  themselves  his 
feudal  servants ;   and  for  seven  centuries   afterwards  the 
whole  kingdom  of  Naples  remained  a  fief  of  St.  Peter,^ — 
won  for  him  thus  by  a  single  man,  unarmed,  against  three 
I  thousand  Norman  knights,  captained  by  Robert  Guiscard  ! 

1  [Sismondi,  p.  267.] 

3  ["Roll  up  that  map,"  he  said;  "it  will  not  be  wanted  these  ten  years."— 
Pitt,  after  Austerlitz  (see  Lord  Rosebery's  Pitt,  p.  256).  See  also  Kinglake's  Eothen, 
p.  123  (ed.  1845).] 

»  [Psalms  ii.  9  ;  cxlvii.  17.] 

*  [See  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  20  (Vol.  XXVII.  pp.  339,  340  n.) ;  and  compare 
A  Knight's  Faith,  ch.  xii.  (Vol.  XXXI.  p.  478).] 
[See  Sismondi,  p.  267.] 


476        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


A  day  of  deeds,  gentlemen,  to  some  purpose,-— ^^ia^  18th 
of  June,  anyhow. 

85.  Here,  in  the  historical  account  of  Norman  character, 
I  must  unwilUngly  stop  for  to-day — because,  as  you  choose 
to  spend  your  University  money  in  building  ball-rooms^ 
instead  of  lecture-rooms,  I  dare  not  keep  you  much  longer 
in  this  black  hole,  with  its  nineteenth  century  ventilation. 
I  try  your  patience — and  tax  your  breath — only  for  a  few 
minutes  more  in  drawing  the  necessary  corollaries  respecting 
Norman  art.*^' 

How  far  the  existing  British  nation  owes  its  military 
prowess  to  the  blood  of  Normandy  and  Anjou,  I  have 
never  examined  its  genealogy  enough  to  tell  you ; — but 
this  I  can  tell  you  positively,  that  whatever  constitutional 
order  or  personal  valour  the  Normans  enforced  or  taught 
among  the  nations  they  conquered,  they  did  not  at  first 
attempt  with  their  own  hands  to  rival  them  in  any  of 
their  finer  arts,  but  used  both  Greek  and  Saxon  sculptors, 
either  as  slaves,  or  hired  workmen,  and  more  or  less  there- 
fore chilled  and  degraded  the  hearts  of  the  men  thus  set  to 
servile,  or  at  best,  hireling,  labour. 

86.  In  1874,  I  went  to  see  Etna,  Scylla,  Charybdis, 
and  the  tombs  of  the  Norman  Kings  at  Palermo;^  surprised, 
as  you  may  imagine,  to  find  that  there  wasn't  a  stroke  nor 
a  notion  of  Norman  work  in  them.  They  are,  every  atom, 
done  by  Greeks,  and  are  as  pure  Greek  as  the  temple  of 
^gina ;  but  more  rich  and  refined.  I  drew  with  accurate 
care,  and  with  measured   profile  of  every  moulding,  the 

*  Given  at  much  greater  length  in  the  lecture,  with  diagrams  from 
Iffley  and  Poitiers,^  without  which  the  text  of  them  would  be  unintel- 
ligible. The  sum  of  what  I  said  was  a  strong  assertion  of  the  incapacity 
of  the  Normans  for  any  but  the  rudest  and  most  grotesque  sculpture, — 
Poitiers  being,  on  the  contrary,  examined  and  praised  as  Gallic-French — 
not  Norman. 

^  [So  Ruskin  describes  the  New  Examination  Schools  ;  compare  above,  p.  363.] 
^   See  the  Introduction  to  Vol.  XXIII.  ;  pp.  xxxi.  seq.] 

^  [A  photograph  of  Iffley,  used  by  Ruskin  at  the  lecture,  remains  in  his  Drawing 
School  (Vol.  XXI.  p.  308).  Of  Poitiers,  there  are  numerous  studies  at  Sheffield 
(Vol.  XXXI.  pp.  220,  221).] 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED  477 


I  tomb  built  for  Roger  II.  (afterwards  Frederick  II.  was  laid 
I  in  its  dark  porphyry).^    And  it  is  a  perfect  type  of  the 
Greek-Christian  form  of  tomb — temple  over  sarcophagus,  in 
which  the  pediments  rise  gradually,  as  time  goes  on,  into 
acute  angles— get  pierced  in  the  gable  with  foils,  and  their 
sculptures  thrown  outside  on  their  flanks,  and  become  at 
last  in  the  fourteenth  century,  the  tombs  of  Verona.  But 
I  what  is  the   meaning   of  the   Normans   employing  these 
I  Greek  slaves  for  their  work  in  Sicily  (within  thirty  miles 
i  of  the  field  of  Himera)  ?    Well,  the  main  meaning  is  that 
though  the  Normans  could  build,  they  couldn't  carve,  and 
were  wise  enough  not  to  try  to,  when  they  couldn't,  as 
you  do  now  all  over  this  intensely  comic  and  tragic  town ; 
but,  here  in  England,  they  only  employed  the  Saxon  with 
a  grudge,  and  therefore  being  more  and  more  driven  to 
I  use  barren  mouldings  without  sculpture,  gradually  developed 
j  the  structural  forms  of  archivolt,  which  breaking  into  the 
I  lancet,  brighten  and  balance  themselves  into  the  symmetry 
j  of  Early  EngHsh  Gothic. 

I  87.  But  even  for  the  first  decoration  of  the  archivolt 
I  itself,  they  were  probably  indebted  to  the  Greeks  in  a 
I  degree  I  never  apprehended,  until  by  pure  happy  chance, 
I  a  friend  gave  me  the  clue  to  it  just  as  I  was  writing  the 
last  pages  of  this  lecture. 

In  the  generalization  of  ornament  attempted  in  the  first 
volume  of  The  Stones  of  Venice,^  I  supposed  the  Norman 
zigzag  (and  with  some  practical  truth)  to  be  derived  from 
the  angular  notches  with  which  the  blow  of  an  axe  can 
I  most  easily  decorate,  or  at  least  vary,  the  solid  edge  of  a 
I  square  fillet.    My  good  friend,  and  supporter,  and  for  some 
[  time  back  the  single  trustee  of  St.  George's  Guild,  Mr. 
George  Baker,  having  come  to  Oxford  on  Guild  business, 
I  happened  to  show  him  the  photographs  of  the  front  of 
Iffley  church,  which  had  been  collected  for  this  lecture; 
and  immediately  afterwards,  in  taking  him  through  the 

1  [For  this  drawing,  see  Plate  XVI.  in  Vol.  XXIII.  (p.  190).] 
»  [Ch.  xxiii.  §§  3,  7  (Vol.  IX.  pp.  318,  321).] 


478         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


schools,  stopped  to  show  him  the  Athena  of  ^gina  as 
one  of  the  most  important  of  the  Greek  examples  lately 
obtained  for  us  by  Professor  Richmond.^  The  statue  is 
(rightly)  so  placed  that  in  looking  up  to  it,  the  plait  of 
hair  across  the  forehead  is  seen  in  a  steeply  curved  arch. 

Why,"  says  Mr.  Baker,  pointing  to  it,  "  there's  the 
Norman  arch  of  Iffley."  Sure  enough,  there  it  exactly 
was :  and  a  moment's  reflection  showed  me  how  easily,  and 
with  what  instinctive  fitness,  the  Norman  builders,  looking 
to  the  Greeks  as  their  absolute  masters  in  sculpture,  and 
recognizing  also,  during  the  Crusades,  the  hieroglyphic  use 
of  the  zigzag,  for  water,  by  the  Egyptians,  might  have 
adopted  this  easily  attained  decoration  at  once  as  the  sign 
of  the  element  over  which  they  reigned,  and  of  the  power 
of  the  Greek  Goddess  who  ruled  both  it  and  them.^ 

88.  I  do  not  in  the  least  press  your  acceptance  of  such 
a  tradition,  nor  for  the  rest,  do  I  care  myself  whence  any 
method  of  ornament  is  derived,  if  only,  as  a  stranger,  you 
bid  it  reverent  welcome.  But  much  probability  is  added 
to  the  conjecture  by  the  indisputable  transition  of  the 
Greek  egg  and  arrow  moulding  into  the  floral  cornices 
of  Saxon  and  other  twelfth-century  cathedrals  in  Central 

^  [One  of  several  casts  from  the  aiitiijiie  in  tlie  University  Galleries.] 

^  [See  the  Queen  of  the  Air,  passiin  (Vol.  XIX.).    The  following  is  the  report 

(in  the  Pa/l  Mall  Gazette)  of  the  foregoing  passage  as  "given  at  much  greater 

length  in  the  lecture  "  : — 

"...  there's  the  chopped  Norman  arch.  The  chopped  Norman  arch  and 
the  fringe  in  which  you  young  ladies  delight  come  alike  from  the  fore- 
head of  Athena.  Nor  was  this  all,  for  on  the  edge  of  her  cestus  Mr. 
Ruskin  found  the  foliation  which  he  showed  in  a  photograph  of  Poitiers, 
just  as  from  her  peplus  comes  the  drapery  of  llheims.  Mr.  Ruskin 
gave  another  interesting  instance  of  the  dependence  of  the  Normans  on 
the  art  of  Greece.  A  few  years  ago  he  went  to  Sicily  to  see  the  tombs  of 
Roger  and  of  Frederick,  and  to  look  at  the  Norman  art  he  would  surely 
find  there.  But  not  a  stroke  of  the  chisel  turned  out  to  belong  to  the 
Normans.  Their  own  masons  could  not  carve,  and  the  tombs  of  the 
Norman  kings  are  the  work  of  Greek  slaves.  What  the  Greeks  carved 
was  a  lion  with  the  Gorgon's  head — again  with  the  chopped  Norman  arch 
in  the  fringe ;  and  what  the  Normans  themselves  made  of  the  Gorgon  may 
be  seen  on  Iffley  Church.  Mr.  Ruskin  here  showed  an  enlarged  drawing 
of  a  grotesque  head — the  Gorgon,  with  long  ears,  and  the  face  elongated 
by  the  Norman  helmet — the  whole  elfect  bearing  a  striking  resemblance 
to  Mephistopheles,  of  which  gentleman  Mr.  Ruskin  promised  to  say  more 
in  later  lectures."] 


III.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  DEED  479 


^'rance.  These  and  other  such  transitions  and  exaltations 
will  give  you  the  materials  to  study  at  your  leisure,  after 
[lustrating  in  my  next  lecture  the  forces  of  religious  imagi- 
lation  by  which  all  that  was  most  beautiful  in  them  was 
aspired.^ 

1  [The  following  is  the  report  (in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette)  of  the  end  of  this 

3Cture  as  delivered  : — 

"  Mr.  Raskin's  peroration  had  not  got  itself  written  on  Saturday  after- 
noon, hut  the  scornful  moral  with  which  his  lectures  are  wont  to  conclude 
was  pointed  very  eifectively  by  some  pictures  instead.  The  first  illustration 
was  the  lucky  outcome  of  his  dinner  with  Professor  Westwood,  who  had 
shown  him  the  Bible  of  Charles  the  Bald,  the  tutor  of  Alfred.  ITie 
illuminated  frontispiece  which  Mr.  Ruskin  showed  is  the  figure  of  a  true 
lion,  inscribed  beneath  with  words  which  run,  being  interpreted,  '  This 
lion  rises,  and  by  his  rising  breaks  the  gates  of  hell.  This  lion  never 
sleeps,  nor  shall  sleep  for  evermore.'  Such  was  the  lion  as  our  Saxon 
Alfred  knew  it.  For  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  Mr.  Ruskin  had  referred  his 
audience  to  Fors  Clavigera  and  the  later  chapters  of  Ivanhoe.  '  Men 
called  him  Lion-heart,"  not  untruly  ;  and  the  English  as  a  people  have 
prided  themselves  somewhat  ever  since  on  having  every  man  of  them  the 
heart  of  a  lion.  Many  lion-hearted  Englishmen  there  have  been,  and  are 
indeed  still  to  this  day  ;  but  for  the  especial  peculiar  typical  product  of 
the  nineteenth  century  see  this  page  of  Punch.'  Mr.  Ruskin  here  dis- 
played in  a  frame  the  inside  fold  of  Punch  for  August  16th,  1884,  con- 
taining on  the  left-hand  page  a  drawing,  by  Mr.  Du  Maurier,  of  the 
different  effects  of  a  good  dinner  on  two  fat  old  gentlemen,  and  on  the 
right  a  cartoon  of  Mr.  Bright,  as  'The  Old  Lion  Aroused.*  Mr.  Ruskin 
had  inserted  a  connecting  mark  between  the  two  pictures,  and  christened 
the  whole  ^  The  New  Lion  Stuffed.'" 

•'or  another  reference  to  Tenniel's  cartoon  of  Mr.  Bright,  see  below,  p.  536.] 

I 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


POSTSCRIPT  TO  LECTURE  III^ 

THE  FIVE  CHRISTMAS  DAYS 
496.  Clovis  baptized  by  St.  Remy. 

800.  Charlemagne  crowned  Emperor  of  the  West  at  Rome,  by  the  Pope. 
1041.  The  Vow  of  Aversa. 

1066.  The  Conqueror  crowned  at  Westminster,  by  the  Bishops  of  York  and 
Coutances. 

1130.  Roger  11.^  crowned  King  of  Sicily  at  Palermo,  by  the  four  Arch- 
bishops of  Palermo,  Salerno,  Capua,  and  Beneventum. 


1250  (December).  Frederick  II.  dies  broken-hearted  at  Castel-Fiorentino.^ 

1  [Printed  from  a  proof,  thus  headed,  among  the  MS.  of  Pleasures  of  England. 
The  dates^  etc.,  were  given,  in  a  shorter  form,  as  a  note  at  the  end  of  the  book 
in  earlier  editions  (see  above,  p.  415).  In  the  lecture-room,  they  were  exhibited 
on  a  diagram,  shown  at  the  beginning  of  Lecture  IV.  (see  note  on  next  page). 
For  references  in  the  Lectures  to  the  baptism  of  Clovis,  see  §  23  (p.  433 ;  com- 
paring p.  39)  ;  and  to  the  "Vow  of  the  Count  of  Aversa,"  §  77  (p.  471).] 

^  [See  lluskin's  drawing,  shown  at  the  lecture,  of  the  Tombs  in  the  Cathedral  of 
Palermo:  Plate  XVI.  in  Vol.  XXIII.  (p.  190).] 

3  [See  Val  d'Amo,  §§  2,  92,  109  (Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  11— where  Ferentiuo  is  a 
slip  for  Castcl  Fioreutino — 56,  66).] 


LECTURE  IV 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY 
CCEUR  DE  LION  TO  ELIZABETH 
(Delivered  8th  and  10th  November  I884i) 

i9.  In  using  the  word  ''Fancy,"  for  the  mental  faculties 
>f  which  I  am  to  speak  to-day,  I  trust  you,  at  your  leisure, 

0  read  the  Introductory  Note  to  the  second  volume  of 

1  [At  the  beginning  of  this  lecture  as  delivered,  Ruskin  began  (says  the  report 

1  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette)  by  filling  up  some  gaps  in  the  preceding  one  :  

"The  first  gap  was  an  enumeration  of  the  'Five  Christmas  Days' 
which,  as  it  happens,  sum  up  the  history  of  five  centuries.  These  dates 
were  written  down  on  a  diagram  which  hung  conspicuously  on  the  wall 
behind  the  lecturer  (see  above,  p.  480).  'These  Christmas  Days  will  be 
referred  to  in  later  lectures/  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  'in  connection  with  the 
way  in  which  you  keep  Christmas  Days  now.' 

"The  filling  up  of  another  gap  was  also  a  correction.  'In  the  last 
lecture  I  gave  you  incidentally'  [and  not  in  the  lecture  as  printed],  said 
Mr.  Ruskin,  '  what  was,  in  my  opinion,  extremely  good  advice — namely, 
never  to  make  a  shot  at  anything,  neither  at  a  word — no,  nor  at  a  bird. 
1  was  the  better  qualified  to  give  that  sage  advice  because  I  was  at  the 
moment  making  a  shot  myself  at  the  name  of  the  Venetian  Doge  who  was 
defeated  by  Robert  Guiscard  (§  78).  I  thought  at  the  time  it  was  Pietro 
Orseolo,  but  I  now  remember  that  it  was  Domenico  Selvo'  [so  corrected 
in  the  lecture  as  publisiied].  Taking  this  slip  apparently  as  an  accident 
sent  by  '  Fors/  Mr.  Ruskin  proceeded  to  say  some  more  about  this  great 
Doge,  reading  from  the  chapter  entitled  '  Divine  Right,'  in  St.  Mark's  Rest 
— 'a  chapter  which  was  always  meant,'  he  said,  'for  a  lecture,  since  much 
of  its  meaning  depended  on  accent.  It  describes  how  the  people  of  Venice 
went  in  armed  boats  to  the  Lido  and  prayed  that  "  God  would  grant  to 
them  such  a  king  as  should  be  worthy  to  reign  over  them";  and  how 
suddenly,  as  they  prayed,  there  rose  up  with  one  accord  among  the 
multitude  the  cry,  "Domenico  Selvo,  we  will,  and  we  approve."  Carlyle 
has  given  you  a  description  of  a  grand  election  in  that  of  the  Abbot 
Samson,  but  this  is  a  grander  still.'  The  chapter  goes  on  to  describe  the 
Doge's  Greek  wife,  whose  reign  'first  gave  the  glories  of  Venetian  art,  in 
true  inheritance  from  the  angels,  of  that  Athenian  Rock  above  which  Ion 
spread  his  starry  tapestry,  and  under  whose  shadow  his  mother  had 
gathered  the  crocus  in  the  dew.' 

"The  mention  of  'Ion'  led  Mr.  Ruskin  into  a  little  digression  about 
the  violet,  for  Euripides'  violet  was  the  viola  odorata  of  pure  blue,  the 
fleur-de-lis  of  Byzantine  ornament.    'Gathering  it  at  its  home  at  Palermo 
long  ago,'  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  'I  matched  it  against  the  "violet  sea,"  and 
XXXIII.  481  2  H 


482         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


Modern  Painters  in  the  small  new  edition,^  which  give 
sufficient  reason  for  practically  including  under  the  singL 
term  Fancy,  or  Fantasy,  all  the  energies  of  the  Imagination 
— in  the  terms  of  the  last  sentence  of  that  preface, — "th« 
healthy,  voluntary,  and  necessary,"^  action  of  the  highes; 
powers  of  the  human  mind,  on  subjects  properly  demanding 
and  justifying  their  exertion." 

90.  I  must  farther  ask  you  to  read,  in  the  same  volume 
the  close  of  the  chapter  "Of  Imagination  Penetrative, j 
§§  29-33,  of  which  the  gist,  which  I  must  give  as  the  firs 
principle  from  which  we  start  in  our  to-day's  inquiry,  i 
that  Imagination,  rightly  so  called,  has  no  food,  no  delight 
no  care,  no  perception,  except  of  truth ;  it  is  for  ever  look 
ing  under  masks,  and  burning  up  mists ;  no  fairness  of  foriri 
no  majesty  of  seeming,  will  satisfy  it ;  the  first  condition  o 
its  existence  is  incapability  of  being  deceived."^  In  tha 
sentence,  which  is  a  part,  and  a  very  valuable  part,  of  th< 
original  book,  I  still  adopted  and  used  unnecessarily  tht 
ordinary  distinction  between  Fancy  and  Imagination — Fane; 
concerned  with  lighter  things,  creating  fairies  or  centaurs 
and  Imagination  creating  men ;  and  I  was  in  the  habi 

*  Meaning  that  all  healthy  minds  possess  imagination,  and  use  it  a| 
will,  under  fixed  laws  of  truthful  perception  and  memory. 


could  not  tell  which  was  which.    Here  are  my  drawings  of  the  sea  an 
of  the  flower.    I  have  ^iven  you  in  the  Turner  gallery,  here  in  Oxforc 
his  rendering  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea — more  skilful  in  its  effect  of  haz 
than  mine,  hut  mine,  I  think,  a  little  more  true  in  colour  ;  at  any  rat 
I  put  all  the  colour  in  my  box  on  it.    It  is  a  picture  of  what  spring  gras 
is  like — in  Sicily  you  cainiot  say  whether  it  is  frreen  or  blue,  pure  whit 
in  Florence  and  in  France,  and  gold  here  on  Isis'  l)anks,  till  your  hoi 
rible  races  came  and  embanked  the  stream,  and  the  noisy  crowds  of  yo 
trampled  the  flowers.' " 
The  chapter  referred  to  in  St.  Marias  Rest  is  ch.  vii. :  see  Vol.  XXIV.  pp.  270  m 
For  Carlyle's  description  of  the  election  of  the  Abbot  Samson,  see  Book  ii.  ch.  vii 
•of  Fafit  and  Present.     For  Ruskin's  study  of  the  violet  in  Sicily  in  1874,  se 
Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  xxxii.-xxxiii.  (comparing  Vol.  XIX.  p.  875,  and  Vol.  XX] 
p.  112).    His  drawings,  shown  at  the  lecture,  cannot  be  certainly  identified.  Th 
drawing  by  Turner  (''Coast  of  Genoa")  is  among  those  which  Ruskin  presente 
to  the  University  Galleries  in  1861 ;  see  Vol.  XIII.  p.  559.]  1 
^  [That  is,  the  note  prefixed  to  the  second  volume  of  the  separate  edition  (| 
Modern  Painters,  vol.  ii.,  issued  in  1883.    See  now  Vol.  IV.  pp.  219-222.] 
2  [Sec.  ii.  ch.  iii.    See  now  Vol.  IV.  p.  285.] 


1 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY 


Iways  of  implying  by  the  meaner  word  Fancy,  a  voluntary 
fallacy,  as  Wordsworth  does  in  those  lines  to  his  wife,^ 
liaking  of  her  a  mere  lay  figure  for  the  drapery  of  his 
mcy— 

"  Such  if  thou  wert,  in  all  men's  view 
An  universal  show, 
What  would  my  Fancy  have  to  do. 
My  feelings  to  bestow  ? " 

5ut  you  will  at  once  understand  the  higher  and  more 
niversal  power  which  I  now  wish  you  to  understand  by 
hie  Fancy,  including  all  imaginative  energy,  correcting  these 
nes  of  Wordsworth's  to  a  more  worthy  description  of  a 
rue  lover's  happiness.  When  a  boy  falls  in  love  with  a 
irl,  you  say  he  has  taken  a  fancy  for  her ;  but  if  he  love 
er  rightly,  that  is  to  say  for  her  noble  qualities,  you  ought 
3  say  he  has  taken  an  imagination  for  her;  for  then  he  is 
ndued  with  the  new  light  of  love  which  sees  and  tells  of 
le  mind  in  her, — and  this  neither  falsely  nor  vainly.  His 
)ve  does  not  bestow,  it  discovers,  what  is  indeed  most 
recious  in  his  mistress,  and  most  needful  for  his  own  life 
fid  happiness.  Day  by  day,  as  he  loves  her  better,  he 
iscerns  her  more  truly ;  and  it  is  only  the  truth  of  his  love 
lat  does  so.  Falsehood  to  her,  would  at  once  disenchant 
ad  blind  him. 

91.  In  my  first  lecture  of  this  year,^  I  pointed  out  to 
ou  with  what  extreme  simplicity  and  reality  the  Christian 
lith  must  have  presented  itself  to  the  Northern  Pagan's 
lind,  in  its  distinction  from  his  former  confused  and 
lonstrous  mythology.  It  was  also  in  that  simplicity  and 
mgible  reality  of  conception,  that  this  Faith  became  to 
lem,  and  to  the  other  savage  nations  of  Europe,  Tutress 
P  the  real  power  of  their  imagination ;  and  it  became  so, 

1  [The  second  stanza  in  the  lines  (as  originallv  published)  On  Mrs.  Words- 
ai-th/'  beginning,  "Let  other  bards  of  angels  sing."  The  stanza  appeared  m  all 
litions  between  1827  and  1843;  but  was  afterwards  omitted  by  the  poet.  It  may 
ive  been  of  these  lines  that  Ruskin  was  tliinking  in  his  note  of  1883  to  Modern 
linters,  vol.  ii.  (see  Vol.  IV.  p.  166 

2  [See  above,  §  12  (p.  427).] 


484         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


only  in  so  far  as  it  indeed  conveyed  to  them  statements] 
which,  however  in  some  respects  mysterious,  were  yet  most 
literally  and  brightly  time,  as  compared  with  their  formeri  ; 
conceptions.    So  that  while  the  blind  cunning  of  the  savage  ' 
had  produced  only  mis-shapen  logs  or  scrawls,  the  seeing  i 
imagination  of  the  Christian  painters  created,  for  them  and 
for  all  the  world,  the  perfect  types  of  the  Virgin  and  ol 
her  Son ;  which  became,  indeed.  Divine,  by  being,  with  the  i 
most  affectionate  truths  human.  i 

92.  And  the  association  of  this  truth  in  loving  concepn  n 
tion,  with  the  general  honesty  and  truth  of  the  character^  1 
is  again  conclusively  shown  in  the  feelings  of  the  lover  to  i 
his  mistress ;  which  we  recognize  as  first  reaching  their;  \ 
height  in  the  days  of  chivalry.    The  truth  and  faith  of  thei  i 
lover,  and  his  piety  to  Heaven,  are  the  foundation,  in  hisj  ii 
character,  of  all  the  joy  in  imagination  which  he  can  receive!  il 
from  the  conception  of  his  lady's — now  no  more  mortal — i  ^ 
beauty.     She  is  indeed  transfigured  before  him ;  but  thej  i 
truth  of  the  transfiguration  is  greater  than  that  of  thej  c 
lightless  aspect  she  bears  to  others.     When  therefore,  im  I 
my  next  lecture,  I  speak  of  the  Pleasures  of  Truth,  as  dis-  i 
tinct  from  those  of  the  Imagination, — if  either  the  limits  i 
or  clearness  of  brief  title  had  permitted  me,  I  should  hav0  1 
said,  untransjigured  truth  ; — meaning  on  the  one  side,  truth! 
which  we  have  not  heart  enough  to  transfigure,  and  on  the 
other,  truth  of  the  lower  kind  which  is  incapable  of  trans- 
figuration.   One  may  look  at  a  girl  till  one  believes  she  is 
an  angel ;  because,  in  the  best  of  her,  she  is  one ;  but  one 
can't  look  at  a  cockchafer  till  one  believes  it  is  a  girl.       j  : 

93.  With  this  warning  of  the  connection  which  exists 
between  the  honest  intellect  and  the  healthy  imagination; 
and  using  henceforward  the  shorter  word  "Fancy"  for  all 
inventive  vision,  I  proceed  to  consider  with  you  the  mean- 
ing and  consequences  of  the  frank  and  eager  exertion  of 
the  fancy  on  Religious  subjects,  between  the  twelfth  and 
sixteenth  centuries. 

Its  first,  and  admittedly  most  questionable  action,  the 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY  485 


)romotion  of  the  group  of  martyr  saints  of  the  third  century 
o  thrones  of  uncontested  dominion  in  heaven,  had  better 
)e  distinctly  understood,  before  we  debate  of  it,  either  with 
he  Iconoclast  or  the  Rationalist.  This  apotheosis  by  the 
magination  is  the  subject  of  my  present  lecture.  To-day 
only  describe  it, — in  my  next  lecture  I  will  discuss  it. 

94.  Observe,  however,  that  in  giving  such  a  history  of 
he  mental  constitution  of  nascent  Christianity,  we  have  to 
leal  with,  and  carefully  to  distinguish,  two  entirely  different 
>rders  in  its  accepted  hierarchy:^ — one,  scarcely  founded  at 
ill  on  personal  characters  or  acts,  but  mythic  or  symbolic  ; 
)ften  merely  the  revival,  the  baptized  resuscitation  of  a 
^a.gsn  deity,  or  the  personified  omnipresence  of  a  Christian 
drtue ; — the  other,  a  senate  of  Patres  Conscripti  of  real 
)ersons,  great  in  genius,  and  perfect,  humanly  speaking,  in 
loliness;  who  by  their  personal  force  and  inspired  wisdom, 
vrought  the  plastic  body  of  the  Church  into  such  noble 
brm  as  in  each  of  their  epochs  it  was  able  to  receive ;  and 
m  the  right  understanding  of  whose  lives,  nor  less  of  the 
tffectionate  traditions  which  magnified  and  illumined  their 
nemories,  must  absolutely  depend  the  value  of  every  esti- 
nate  we  form,  whether  of  the  nature  of  the  Christian 
IJhurch  herself,  or  of  the  directness  of  spiritual  agency  by 
vhich  she  was  guided."^ 

An  important  distinction,  therefore,  is  to  be  noted  at 
he  outset,  in  the  objects  of  this  Apotheosis,  according  as 
:hey  are,  or  are  not,  real  persons. 

95.  Of  these  two  great  orders  of  Saints,  the  first, 
l)r  mythic,  belongs — speaking  broadly — to  the  southern  or 
Sreek  Church  alone. 

The  Gothic  Christians,  once  detached  from  the  worship. 

*  If  the  reader  believes  in  no  spiritual  agency,  still  his  understanding 
)f  the  first  letters  in  the  Alphabet  of  History  depends  on  his  compre- 
lending  rightly  the  tempers  of  the  people  who  did. 


1  [Compare  Ruskin's  notes  on  '^The  Story  of  Lucia"  in  Roadside  Songs  of 
Tmcany,  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  61.] 


486         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


of  Odin  and  Thor,  abjure  from  their  hearts  all  trust  in  the 
elements,  and  all  worship  of  ideas.  They  will  have  their 
Saints  in  flesh  and  blood,  their  Angels  in  plume  and  armour; 
and  nothing  incorporeal  or  invisible.  In  all  the  Religious 
sculpture  beside  Loire  and  Seine,  you  will  not  find  either 
of  the  great  rivers  personified;  the  dress  of  the  highest 
seraph  is  of  true  steel  or  sound  broadcloth,  neither  flecked 
by  hail,  nor  fringed  by  thunder ;  and  while  the  ideal  Charity 
of  Giotto  at  Padua  presents  her  heart  in  her  hand  to  God, 
and  tramples  at  the  same  instant  on  bags  of  gold,  the 
treasures  of  the  world,  and  gives  only  corn  and  flowers,^ 
that  on  the  west  porch  of  Amiens  is  content  to  clothe  a 
beggar  with  a  piece  of  the  staple  manufacture  of  the  town.^ 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  nearly  impossible  to  find  in  the 
imagery  of  the  Greek  Church,  under  the  former  exercise 
of  the  Imagination,  a  representation  either  of  man  or  beast 
which  purports  to  represent  only  the  person,  or  the  brute. 
Every  mortal  creature  stands  for  an  Immortal  Intelligence 
or  Influence :  a  Lamb  means  an  Apostle,  a  Lion  an  Evan- 
gelist, an  Angel  the  Eternal  justice  or  benevolence;  and 
the  most  historical  and  indubitable  of  Saints  are  compelled 
to  set  forth,  in  their  vulgarly  apparent  persons,  a  Platonic 
myth  or  an  Athanasian  article. 

96.  I  therefore  take  note  first  of  the  mythic  saints  in 
succession,  whom  this  treatment  of  them  by  the  Byzan- 
tine Church  made  afterwards  the  favourite  idols  of  all 
Christendom. 

(I.)  The  most  mythic  is  of  course  St.  Sophia;  the  shade 
of  the  Greek  Athena,  passing  into  the  "  Wisdom "  of  the 
Jewish  Proverbs  and  Psalms,  and  the  Apocryphal  "  Wisdom 
of  Solomon."  She  always  remains  understood  as  a  personi- 
fication only ;  and  has  no  direct  influence  on  the  mind  of 
the  unlearned  multitude  of  Western  Christendom,  except 
as  a  godmother, — in  which  kindly  function  she  is  more 

1  rSee  Plate  ill.  and  p.  130  in  Vol.  XXVll.] 

2  [See  above,  p.  155  (9  a).] 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY  487 

and  more  accepted  as  times  go  on;  her  healthy  influence 
being  perhaps  greater  over  sweet  vicars'  daughters  in  Wake- 
field— when  Wakefield  was, — than  over  the  prudentest  of 
the  rarely  prudent  Empresses  of  Byzantium.^ 

(II.)  Of  St.  Catharine  of  Egypt  there  are  vestiges  of 
personal  tradition  which  may  perhaps  permit  the  supposition 
jof  her  having  really  once  existed,  as  a  very  lovely,  witty, 
jproud,  and  fanciful"  girl.  She  afterwards  becomes  the 
IChristian  type  of  the  Bride,  in  the  "Song  of  Solomon,"^ 
involved  with  an  ideal  of  all  that  is  purest  in  the  life  of  a 
nun,  and  brightest  in  the  death  of  a  martyr.  It  is  scarcely 
possible  to  overrate  the  influence  of  the  conceptions  formed 
of  her,  in  ennobling  the  sentiments  of  Christian  women  of 
the  higher  orders ; — to  their  practical  common  sense,  as  the 
mistresses  of  a  household  or  a  nation,  her  example  may 
have  been  less  conducive.^ 

97.  (III.)  St.  Barbara,  also  an  Egyptian,  and  St.  Catha- 
rine's   contemporary,   though  the  most  practical   of  the 
mythic  saints,  is  also,  after  St.  Sophia,  the  least  corporeal: 
she  vanishes  far  away  into  the  "  Inclusa  Danae,"  *  and  her 
"Turris  aenea"  becomes  a  myth  of  Christian  safety,  of 
which  the  Scriptural  significance  may  be  enough  felt  by 
merely  looking  out  the  texts  under  the  word  "Tower,"  in 
your  concordance;  and  whose  effectual  power,  in  the  for- 
I  titudes  alike  of  matter  and  spirit,  was  in  all  probability 
I  made  impressive  enough  to  all  Christendom,  both  by  the 
j  fortifications  and  persecutions  of  Diocletian.    I  have  en- 
I  deavoured  to  mark  her  general  relations  to  St.  Sophia  in 
I  the  little  imaginary  dialogue  between  them,  given  in  the 
eighth  lecture  of  The  Ethics  of  the  Dust} 

^  [For  other  reference  to  St.  Sophia,  "to  whom  the  first  great  Christian  temple 
was  dedicated,"  at  Constantinople,  see  Mornings  in  Florence,  §  91  (Vol.  XXIII. 
p.  385) ;  for  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  588  ;  for  Wakefield,  pnst  and 
present,  Fors  Glavigera,  Letters  55  and  57  (Vol.  XXVIII.  pp.  380,  409).] 
^  [Compare  ahove,  p.  303  n.]  * 
3  [For  other  references  to  St.  Catharine  of  Alexandria,  see  Fors  Clavigera, 
Letters  12  and  26  (Vol.  XXVIL  pp.  206,  482).] 

*  [Horace,  Odes,  iii.  16,  1:  "Inclusam  Danaiin  turris  aenea."] 
^  [See  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  316,  where  St.  Sophia  is  identified  with  Neith,  as  ex- 
plained earlier  in  the  book  (p,  231).] 


488         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

Afterwards,  as  Gothic  architecture  becomes  dominant, 
and  at  last  beyond  question  the  most  wonderful  of  all 
temple-building,  St.  Barbara's  Tower  is,  of  course,  its  per- 
fected symbol  and  utmost  achievement,^  and  whether  in 
the  coronets  of  countless  battlements  worn  on  the  brows 
of  the  noblest  cities,  or  in  the  Lombard  bell-tower  on  the 
mountains,  and  the  English  spire  on  Sarum  plain,  the  geo- 
metric majesty  of  the  Egyptian  maid  became  glorious  in 
harmony  of  defence,  and  sacred  with  precision  of  symbol. 

As  the  buildings  which  showed  her  utmost  skill  were 
chiefly  exposed  to  lightning,  she  is  invoked  in  defence  from 
it ;  and  our  petition  in  the  Litany,  against  sudden  death, 
was  written  originally  to  her.^  The  blasphemous  corruptions 
of  her  into  a  patroness  of  cannon  and  gunpowder,  are 
among  the  most  ludicrous,  (because  precisely  contrary  to 
the  original  tradition,)  as  well  as  the  most  deadly,  insolences 
and  stupidities  of  Renaissance  Art. 

98.  (IV.)  St.  Margaret  of  Antioch  was  a  shepherdess; 
the  St.  Genevieve  of  the  East ;  the  type  of  feminine 
gentleness  and  simplicity.  Traditions  of  the  resurrection  of 
Alcestis  perhaps  mingle  in  those  of  her  contest  with  the 
dragon ;  but  at  all  events,  she  differs  from  the  other  three 
great  mythic  saints,  in  expressing  the  soul's  victory  over 
temptation  or  affliction,  by  Christ's  miraculous  help,  and 
without  any  special  power  of  its  own.  She  is  the  saint  of 
the  meek  and  of  the  poor ;  her  virtue  and  her  victory  are 
those  of  all  gracious  and  lowly  womanhood ;  and  her  memory 
is  consecrated  among  the  gentle  households  of  Europe;  no 
other  name,  except  those  of  Jeanne  and  Jeanie,  seems  so 
gifted  with  a  baptismal  fairy  powder  of  giving  grace  and 
peace. 

I  must  be  forgiven  for  thinking,  even  on  this  canoni- 
cal ground,  not  only  of  Jeanie  Deans,  and  Margaret  of 

-  [Compare  Ethics  of  the  Dust,  Vol.  XVIII.  pp.  316,  366.] 

2  ["St.  Barbara^  as  protectress  ajj^ainst  thunder  and  lightning,  firearms  and  gun- 
powder, is  also  invoked  against  sudden  death ;  for  it  was  believed  that  those  who 
devoted  themselves  to  her  should  not  die  impenitent,  nor  without  having  first  received 
the  holy  sacrament"  (Mrs.  Jameson's  Sacred  and  Legendary  Art,  2nd  ed.  p.  293).] 


i  ttftt  0  foil  lotntrio  otanta 


timer  cot  pttsmeuminttiaai 


1 


latum-  ur  nocDn  litn  Danu 
duams     acmbnants  taunt 


,T<=T  aqan  *  Oiinimiag,  hdin'' 

MINIATURE    OF    ST  CECILIA. 
From  an  Antiphonaire  of  1290  which  belonged  to  the  Abbesse  of  Beau  Pre 
Size  of  oii^iiiiii  ig  in.  x   13  in. 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY  489 


Branksome;  but  of  Meg — Merrilies.^  My  readers  will,  I 
fear,  choose  rather  to  think  of  the  more  doubtful  victory 
over  the  Dragon,  v^on  by  the  great  Margaret  of  German 
literature.^ 

99.  (V.)  With  much  more  clearness  and  historic  comfort 
we  may  approach  the  shrine  of  St.  CeciHa;  and  even  on 
the  most  prosaic  and  realistic  minds — such  as  my  own — a 
visit  to  her  house  in  Rome^  has  a  comforting  and  estab- 
lishing effect,  which  reminds  one  of  the  carter  in  Harry 
and  Lucy,  who  is  convinced  of  the  truth  of  a  plaustral 
catastrophe  at  first  incredible  to  him,  as  soon  as  he  hears 
the  name  of  the  hill  on  which  it  happened.^  The  ruling 
conception  of  her  is  deepened  gradually  by  the  enlarged 
study  of  Religious  music ;  and  is  at  its  best  and  highest  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  when  she  rather  resists  than  com- 
plies with  the  already  tempting  and  distracting  powers  of 
sound;  and  we  are  told  that  cantantibus  organis,  Cecilia 
virgo  in  corde  suo  soli  Domino  decantabat,  dicens,  *Fiat, 
Domine,  cor  meum  et  corpus  meum  immaculatum,  ut  non 
confundar.' " 

(*'  While  the  instruments  played,  CeciHa  the  virgin  sang 
in  her  heart  only  to  the  Lord,  saying.  Oh  Lord,  be  my 
heart  and  body  made  stainless,  that  I  be  not  confounded.") 

This  sentence  occurs  in  my  great  Service-book  of  the 
convent  of  Beau-pre,  written  in  1290,  and  it  is  illustrated 
with  a  miniature  of  Cecilia  sitting  silent  at  a  banquet, 
where  all  manner  of  musicians  are  playing.^    I  need  not 

^  [For  other  references  to  Jeaiiie  Deans,  see  Vol.   XXVII.  p.  564  n.,  and 
,   below,  p.  506;  for  Margaret  of  Branksome,  see  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel;  and  for 
Meg  Merrilies,  Vol,  XXII.  p.  444  w.] 

^  [For  another  reference  to  Faust  and  Margaret,  see  above,  p.  63.] 
3   The  Church  of  St.  CeciHa,  built  on  the  site  of  her  house.] 
*  [See  Harry  and  Lucy  Concluded,  1825,  vol.  ii.  p.  128:  "Some  gunpowder  had 
I   been  shaken  oiit  of  a  barrel  in  the  waggon,  and  had  taken  fire,  as  it  is  supposed, 
from  a  spark  struck  from  a  flint  in  the  road.    The  waggoner  scarcely  credited  the 
story,  till  he  heard  the  name  of  the  hill  down  which  the  waggon  had  been  going, 
and  "then,  as  Harry  observed,  without  any  further  question,  he  believed  it  to  be  true."] 
5  [Plate  XL.,  opposite.    The  report  (in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette)  adds:  "1  have 
selfishly  kept  it  in  my  own  house,  but  it  shall  go  to  your  schools  now."  Ruskin 
did  not,  however,  pres'ent  the  book  to  Oxford  ;  but  one  jjage  of  it  is  in  the  Ruskin 
Drawing  School  at  Oxford  (see  Vol.  XXI.  p.  16).    For  other  references  to  the 
book,  see  the  passages  there  noted,  and  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  83  7i.] 


490         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


point  out  to  you  how  the  law,  not  of  sacred  music  only, 
so  called,  but  of  all  music,  is  determined  by  this  sentence; 
which  means  in  effect  that  unless  music  exalt  and  purify, 
it  is  not  under  St.  Cecilia's  ordinance,  and  it  is  not, 
virtually,  music  at  all. 

Her  confessed  power  at  last  expires  amidst  a  hubbub 
of  odes  and  sonatas ;  and  I  suppose  her  presence  at  a 
Monday  Popular^  is  as  little  anticipated  as  desired.  Uncon- 
fessed,  she  is  of  all  the  mythic  saints  for  ever  the  greatest; 
and  the  child  in  its  nurse's  arms,  and  every  tender  and 
gentle  spirit  which  resolves  to  purify  in  itself, — as  the  eye 
for  seeing,  so  the  ear  for  hearing, — may  still,  whether  behind 
the  Temple  veil,'^  or  at  the  fireside,  and  by  the  wayside, 
hear  Cecilia  sing. 

100.  It  would  delay  me  too  long  just  now  to  trace  in 
specialty  farther  the  functions  of  the  mythic,  or,  as  in  an- 
other sense  they  may  be  truly  called,  the  universal.  Saints: 

*  "  But,  standing  in  the  lowest  place, 

And  mingled  with  tlie  work-day  crowd, 
A  poor  man  looks,  with  lifted  face. 
And  hears  the  Angels  cry  aloud. 

He  seeks  not  how  each  instant  flies, 
One  moment  is  Eternity ; 
His  spirit  with  the  Angels  cries 
To  Thee,  to  Thee,  continually. 

What  if,  Isaiah-like,  he  know 
His  heart  be  weak,  his  lips  unclean, 
His  nature  vile,  his  office  low. 
His  dwelling  and  his  people  mean  ? 

To  such  the  Angels  spake  of  old — 
To  such  of  yore,  the  glory  came  ; 
These  altar  fires  can  ne'er  grow  cold  : 
Then  be  it  his,  that  cleansing  flame." 

These  verses,  part  of  a  very  lovely  poem,  ''To  Thee  all  Angels  cry 
aloud,"    in   the   Monthly    Packet    for   September    1873,   are   only  signed 


1  [Hitherto  printed  "  Morning  Popular,"  but  the  report  (in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette) 
gives  "Monday  Pop.,"  as  these  well-known  concerts  at  !St.  James's  Hall  were 
called.] 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY  491 


the  next  greatest  of  them,  St.  Ursula,  is  essentially  British, 
— and  you  will  find  enough  about  her  in  Fors  Clavigera  ;^ 
the  others,  I  will  simply  give  you  in  entirely  authoritative 
order  from  the  St.  Louis'  Psalter,'  as  he  read  and  thought 
of  them. 

The  proper  Service-book  of  the  thirteenth  century  con- 
sists first  of  the  pure  Psalter;  then  of  certain  essential  pas- 
sages of  the  Old  Testament — invariably  the  Song  of  Miriam 
at  the  Red  Sea  and  the  last  song  of  Moses; — ordinarily 
also  the  12th  of  Isaiah  and  the  prayer  of  Habakkuk ;  while 
St.  Louis'  Psalter  has  also  the  prayer  of  Hannah,  and  that 
of  Hezekiah  (Isaiah  xxxviii.  10-20) ;  the  Song  of  the  Three 
Children;  the  Benedictus,  the  Magnificat,  and  the  Nunc 
Dimittis.  Then  follows  the  Athanasian  Creed ;  and  then, 
as  in  all  Psalters  after  their  chosen  Scripture  passages,  the 
collects  to  the  Virgin,  the  Te  Deum,  and  Service  to  Christ, 
beginning  with  the  Psalm  **  The  Lord  reigneth " ;  and  then 
the  collects  to  the  greater  individual  saints,  closing  with 
the  Litany,  or  constant  prayer  for  mercy  to  Christ,  and 
all  saints ;  of  whom  the  order  is, — Archangels,  Patriarchs, 
Apostles,  Disciples,  Innocents,  Martyrs,  Confessors,  Monks, 
and  Virgins.  Of  women  the  Magdalen  always  leads  ;^  St. 
Mary  of  Egypt  usually  follows,  but  may  be  the  last.  Then 

"Veritas/'  The  volume  for  that  year  (the  l6th)  is  well  worth  getting, 
for  the  sake  of  the  admirable  papers  in  it  by  Miss  Sewell,  on  Questions 
of  the  Day;  by  Miss  A.  C.  Owen,  on  Christian  Art;^  and  the  unsigned 
Cameos  from  English  History. 


1  [See  Letters  40,  71-77,  88,  91.] 

2  [For  the  Psalter,  so  called  by  Ruskin,  see  Vol.  XXL  p.  15  w.  A  full  (and 
more  exact)  account  of  its  contents  is  given  in  Mr.  S.  C.  Cockerell's  monograph 
there  referred  to.] 

3  ["Of  the  Magdalen,"  says  the  report  of  the  lecture  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette^ 
Ruskin  "remarked  that  any  woman,  whatever  her  position,  who  sells  herself  for 
money  is  a  harlot,  while  the  Magdalen  is  the  type  of  those  for  whom  the  guilt  of 
others  around  them  have  'taken  away  my  Christ;  I  know  not  where  they  have 
laid  Him'"  (see  John  xx.  13).] 

^  [For  these  papers,  when  collected  into  a  book,  Ruskin  wrote  a  Preface:  see 
Vol.  XXXIV.  Two  series  of  the  Cameos  from  English  History  had  already  been 
published  in  book-form,  as  "By  the  author  of  'The  Heir  of  Redclyffe"  (Miss 
Yonge).] 


492         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


the  order  varies  in  every  place,  and  prayer-book,  no  recog- 
nizable supremacy  being  traceable ;  except  in  relation  to 
the  place,  or  person,  for  whom  the  book  was  written.  In 
St.  Louis',  St.  Genevieve  (the  last  saint  to  whom  he  prayed 
on  his  death-bed)  follows  the  two  Maries ;  then  come — 
memorable  for  you  best,  as  easiest,  in  this  six-foil  group, — 
Saints  Catharine,  Margaret,  and  Scolastica,  Agatha,  Cecilia, 
and  Agnes ;  and  then  ten  more,  whom  you  may  learn  or 
not  as  you  like :  I  note  them  now  only  for  future  reference, 
— more  lively  and  easy  for  your  learning, — by  their  French 
names, 

Felicite, 

Colombe, 

Christine, 

Auree,  Honorine, 

Radegonde, 

Pnixede, 

Euphemie, 

Bathilde,  Eugenie. 

101.  Such  was  the  system  of  Theology  into  which  the 
Imaginative  Religion  of  Europe  was  crystaUized,  by  the 
growth  of  its  own  best  faculties,  and  the  influence  of  all 
accessible  and  credible  authorities,  during  the  period  between 
the  eleventh  and  fifteenth  centuries  inclusive.  Its  spiritual 
power  is  completely  represented  by  the  angelic  and  apostolic 
dynasties,  and  the  women-saints  in  Paradise;  for  of  the 
men-saints,  beneath  the  apostles  and  prophets,  none  but 
St.  Christopher,  St.  Nicholas,  St.  Anthony,  St.  James,  and 
St.  George,  attained  anything  like  the  influence  of  Catharine 
or  Cecilia ;  for  the  very  curious  reason,  that  the  men-saints 
were  much  more  true,  real,  and  numerous.  St.  Martin  was 
reverenced  all  over  Europe,  but  definitely,  as  a  man,  and 
the  Bishop  of  Tours.  So  St.  Ambrose  at  Milan,  and  St. 
Gregory  at  Rome,  and  hundreds  of  good  men  more,  all 
over  the  world ;  while  the  really  good  women  remained, 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY 


though  not  rare,  inconspicuous.  The  virtues  of  French 
Clotilde,  and  Swiss  Berthe,^  were  painfully  borne  down  iij 
the  balance  of  visible  judgment,  by  the  guilt  of  the  Gonerils, 
Regans,  and  Lady  Macbeths,  whose  spectral  procession  closes 
only  with  the  figure  of  Eleanor  in  Woodstock  maze;'  and 
in  dearth  of  nearer  objects,  the  daily  brighter  powers  of 
fancy  dwelt  with  more  concentrated  devotion  on  the  stain- 
less ideals  of  the  earlier  maid-martyrs.  And  observe,  even 
the  loftier  fame  of  the  men-saints  above  named,  as  compared 
with  the  rest,  depends  on  precisely  the  same  character  of 
indefinite  personality;  and  on  the  representation,  by  each 
of  them,  of  a  moral  idea  which  may  be  embodied  and 
painted  in  a  miraculous  legend;  credible,  as  history,  even 
then,  only  to  the  vulgar;  but  powerful  over  them,  never- 
theless, exactly  in  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  it  can 
be  pictured  and  fancied  as  a  living  creature.  Consider 
even  yet  in  these  days  of  mechanism,  how  the  dullest  John 
Bull  cannot  with  perfect  complacency  adore  himself,  except 
under  the  figure  of  Britannia  or  the  British  Lion ;  and 
how  the  existence  of  the  popular  jest-book,  which  might 
have  seemed  secure  in  its  necessity  to  our  weekly  recrea- 
tion, is  yet  virtually  centred  on  the  imaginary  animation 
of  a  puppet,  and  the  imaginary  elevation  to  reason  of  a 
dog.  But  in  the  Middle  Ages,  this  action  of  the  Fancy, 
now  distorted  and  despised,  was  the  happy  and  sacred 
tutress  of  every  faculty  of  the  body  and  soul;  and  the 
works  and  thoughts  of  art,  the  joys  and  toils  of  men,  rose 
and  flowed  on  in  the  bright  air  of  it,  with  the  aspiration 
of  a  flame,  and  the  beneficence  of  a  fountain.^ 

^  [For  Clotilde,  see  Bible  of  Amiens,  above,  pp.  81-83.  For  "the  Swiss  Berths," 
see  above,  p.  324 ;  and  compare  Prceterita,  iii.  §§  38-40,  and  Vol.  XXVII. 
p.  186.] 

[See  Vol.  XXVII.  p.  53  n.] 
3  [The  following  passage  is  from  the  MS.  notes  for  this  lecture  :— 

"Now,  in  examining  the  power  of  these  imageries  you  must  remember 
first,  that  the  subtleties  of  a  close  analytical  inquiry  into  the  varieties  of 
emotion  concerned  in  it  would— or  might— take  all  the  student's  hours  of 
a  lifetime.  I  could  write  another  second  volume  of  Modern  Painters,  and 
a  very  interesting  one,  on  the  modes  of  contemplative  imagination,  merely 
in  explaining  the  differences  between  the  modes  of  personification  in  the 


494         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


102.  And  now,  in  the  rest  of  my  lecture,  I  had  in- 
tended to  give  you  a  broad  summary  of  the  rise  and  fall 
of  EngUsh  art,  born  under  this  code  of  theology,  and  this 
enthusiasm  of  duty; — of  its  rise,  from  the  rude  vaults  of 
Westminster,  to  the  finished  majesty  of  Wells  ;  ^ — and  of 
its  fall,  from  that  brief  hour  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
through  the  wars  of  the  Bolingbroke,  and  the  pride  of 
the  Tudor,  and  the  lust  of  the  Stewart,  to  expire  under 
the  mocking  snarl  and  ruthless  blow  of  the  Puritan.  But 
you  know  that  I  have  always,  in  my  most  serious  work, 
allowed  myself  to  be  influenced  by  those  Chances,  as  they 

Graces,  the  Seasons,  the  Months,  and  the  Virtues,  lint  through  all  these 
varieties  of  feeling  and  conception,  fasten  your  own  mind  steadily  on  the 
stern  separation  between  Faith  in  a  Person,  and  Delight  in  an  Imagina- 
tion. My  pleasure,  or  yours,  if  you  have  enough  fancy  to  receive  it,  in 
seeing  Fear  dropping  his  sword  as  the  birds  rustle,  or  the  montli  of  May 
gathering  her  flowers,  on  the  porcli  of  Amiens,  is  a  totally  different 
one  from  that  with  which  the  Roman  Senate  sacriliced  to  its  stiitue  of 
Victory,  or  Giotto  painted  the  marriage  of  St.  Francis  to  Pijverty ;  and 
these  feelings  are  again  separated,  and  by  a  still  nider  bar,  from  those 
which  dictated  the  prayer  of  Tydides  or  Ulysses  to  Pallas,  or  with  wliich  a 
Catholic  addresses  a  prayer  to  St.  Barbara  or  St.  Ursula. 

Remember,  theref(n-e,  that  real  prayer  must  always  be  offered  to  a 
real  person,  and  that  the  entire  ])o\ver  of  all  churches  and  religions  what- 
soever, depends  on  the  frankness  of  their  trust  in  the  personal  existence 
and  sympathetic  feelings  of  the  Deities  in  whom  they  believe.  And  you 
must  never  let  your  full  grasp  of  this  vitiility  be  touched  by  the  inter- 
ference of  the  .symbolic  or  ligiu-ative  truths  .associated  with  it.  Pallas  is 
the  goddess  of  the  air,  and  tlie  light, — Xeptune  of  the  sea  and  the  depth, 
Demeter  of  the  earth  and  its  harvests,  and  Vulcan  of  the  fire  an<l  its  arts  ; 
you  will  continually  find  the  i)()ets,  and  always  the  sculptors  and  painters, 
dwelling  on  their  elemental  cliaracter,  and  the  whole  generation  of  modern 
blockheads  believing,  with  all  the  wood  and  mud  and  nuicus  they  are  made 
of,  that  the  Gods  never  meant  anything  else. 

"  Hut  Pallas  cleaving  the  cloud,  and  Poseidon  calming  the  sea,  are 
as  real  persons  to  a  Greek  soul,  in  the  great  days  of  (ireece,  as  Ghrist  on 
the  lake  of  Galilee  is  to  a  Christian's — or  was  to  a  Christian'.s,  in  the  great 
hour  of  Christendom,  and  you  may  rest  absolutely  on  the  general  truth 
respecting  Human  Nature,  that  its  fortitude  and  honour  have  hitherto 
depended  {ca'teris  parihus)  accurately  on  the  intensity  and  simplicity  of 
its  trust  in  a  Personal  (lod." 

For  the  reference  to  "Fear"  on  the  porch  of  Amiens,  see  above,  p.  152  (Plate  XIV.). 

^'^The  month  of  Mav "  should  }>e  June  :  see  above,  \).  KJ-A  and  Plate  XXVI.  For 

Giotto's     Marriage '  of  St.  Francis  to  Poverty,"  see  Plate  U  in  Vol.  XXVIII. 

(p.  164).] 

*  [For  similar  references  to  the  cathedral  of  A\'ells,  see  Vol.  VIIL  p.  12,  and 
Vol.  XII.  p.  92.  Ruskin  had  taken  for  him  a  complete  series  of  large  photo- 
graphs of  the  sculptures  of  the  west  front ;  the  collection  remains  in  a  cabinet  at 
Brantwood.l 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY  495 


are  now  called, — but  to  my  own  feeling  and  belief,  guid- 
ances, and  even,  if  rightly  understood,  commands, — which 
as  far  as  I  have  read  history,  the  best  and  sincerest  men 
think  providential.  Had  this  lecture  been  on  common 
principles  of  art,  I  should  have  finished  it  as  I  intended, 
without  fear  of  its  being  the  worse  for  my  consistency. 
But  it  deals,  on  the  contrary,  with  a  subject,  respecting 
which  every  sentence  I  write,  or  speak,  is  of  importance 
in  its  issue ;  and  I  allowed,  as  you  heard,  the  momentary 
observation  of  a  friend,  to  give  an  entirely  new  cast  to  the 
close  of  my  last  lecture.^  Much  more,  I  feel  it  incumbent 
upon  me  in  this  one,  to  take  advantage  of  the  most  oppor- 
tune help,  though  in  an  unexpected  direction,  given  me  by 
my  constant  tutor,  Professor  Westwood.^  I  went  to  dine 
with  him,  a  day  or  two  ago,  mainly — being  neither  of  us, 
I  am  thankful  to  say,  blue-ribanded — to  drink  his  health 
on  his  recovery  from  his  recent  accident.  Whereupon  he 
gave  me  a  feast  of  good  talk,  old  wine,  and  purple  manu- 
scripts. And  having  had  as  much  of  all  as  I  could  well 
carry,  just  as  it  came  to  the  good-night,  out  he  brings, 
for  a  finish,  this  leaf  of  manuscript  in  my  hand,  which  he 
has  lent  me  to  show  you, — a  leaf  of  the  Bible  of  Charles 
the  Bald! 

A  leaf  of  it,  at  least,  as  far  as  you  or  I  could  tell,  for 
Professor  Westwood's  copy  is  just  as  good,  in  all  the  parts 
finished,  as  the  original;  and,  for  all  practical  purpose,  I 
show  you  here  in  my  hand  a  leaf  of  the  Bible  which  your 
own  King  Alfred  saw  with  his  own  bright  eyes,  and  from 
which  he  learned  his  child-faith  in  the  days  of  dawning 
thought ! 

103.  There  are  few  EngUsh  children  who  do  not  know 
the  story  of  Alfred,  the  king,  letting  the  cakes  burn,  and 
being  chidden  by  his  peasant  hostess.  How  few  Enghsh 
children— nay,  how  few  perhaps  of  their  educated,  not  to 

1  [See  above,  p.  477.] 

2  whom,  see  Vol.  XV.  p.  424  n.\ 


496        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 

say  learned,  elders — reflect  upon,  if  even  they  know,  the 
far  different  scenes  through  which  he  had  passed  when  a 
child! 

Concerning  his  father,  his  mother,  and  his  own  child-  | 
hood,  suppose  you  were  to  teach  your  children  first  these  ' 
following  main  facts,  before  you  come  to  the  toasting  of 
the  muffin  ? 

His  father,  educated  by  Helmstan,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, had  been  offered  the  throne  of  the  great  Saxon 
kingdom  of  Mercia  in  his  early  youth ;  had  refused  it,  and 
entered,  as  a  novice  under  St.  Swithin,  the  monastery  at  t 
Winchester.  From  St.  Swithin,  he  received  the  monastic 
habit,  and  was  appointed  by  Bishop  Helmstan  one  of  his  ^ 
sub-deacons !  I 

"  The  quiet  seclusion  which  Ethelwulph's  slow  ^  capacity 
and  meek  temper  coveted"  was  not  permitted  to  him  by 
fate.  The  death  of  his  elder  brother  left  him  the  only 
living  representative  of  the  line  of  the  West  Saxon  princes. 
His  accession  to  the  throne  became  the  desire  of  the 
people.  He  obtained  a  dispensation  from  the  Pope  to  leave 
the  cloister ;  assumed  tlie  crown  of  Egbert ;  and  retained 
Egbert's  prime  minister,  Alstan,  Bishop  of  Sherborne,  who 
was  the  Minister  in  peace  and  war,  the  Treasurer,  and  the 
Counsellor,  of  the  kings  of  England,  over  a  space,  from 
first  to  last,  of  fifty  years. 

Alfred's  mother,  Osburga,  must  have  been  married  for 
love.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Oslac,  the  king's  cup-bearer. 
Extolled  for  lier  piety  and  understanding,  she  bore  the 
king  four  sons ;  dying  before  the  last,  Alfred,  was  five 
years  old,  but  leaving  him  St.  Swithin  for  his  tutor.  How 
little  do  any  of  us  think,  in  idle  talk  of  rain  or  no  rain 
on  St.  Swithin's  day,  that  we  speak  of  the  man  whom 

*  Turner,!  quoting  William  of  xMalmesbury,  Crassioris  et  hebetis  in- 
genii," — meaning  that  he  had  neither  ardour  for  war,  nor  ambition  for 
kinghood. 


1  [Sharon  Turner's  Bistort/  of  L'jiy/anfJ,  Book  iv.  ch.  iv.  ;  vol.  i.  p.  480.] 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY 


Alfred's  father  obeyed  as  a  monk,  and  whom  his  mother 
chose  for  his  guardian  ! 

104.  Alfred,  both  to  father  and  mother,  was  the  best 
beloved  of  their  children.  On  his  mother's  death,  his  father 
sent  him,  being  then  five  years  old,  with  a  great  retinue 
through  France  and  across  the  Alps,  to  Rome;  and  there 
the  Pope  anointed  him  King,  (heir- apparent  to  the  EngKsh 
throne,)  at  the  request  of  his  father.^ 

Think  of  it,  you  travellers  through  the  Alps  by  tunnels, 
that  you  may  go  to  balls  at  Rome,  or  hells  at  Monaco. 
Here  is  another  manner  of  journey,  another  goal  for  it, 
appointed  for  your  little  king.  At  twelve,  he  was  already 
the  best  hunter  among  the  Saxon  youths.  Be  sure  he 
could  sit  his  horse  at  five.  Fancy  the  child,  with  his  keen 
genius,  and  holy  heart,  riding  with  his  Saxon  chiefs  beside 
him,  by  the  Alpine  flowers  under  Velan  or  Sempione,  and 
down  among  the  olives  to  Pavia,  to  Perugia,  to  Rome; 
there,  like  the  little  fabled  Virgin,  ascending  the  temple 
steps,^  and  consecrated  to  be  King  of  England  by  the  great 
Leo,  Leo  of  the  Leonine  city,  the  saviour  of  Rome  from 
the  Saracen. 

105.  Two  years  afterwards,  he  rode  again  to  Rome 
beside  his  fathei' ;  the  West  Saxon  king  bringing  presents 
to  the  Pope,  a  crown  of  pure  gold  weighing  four  pounds, 
a  sword  adorned  with  pure  gold,  two  golden  images,^  four 
Saxon  silver  dishes  ;  and  giving  a  gift  of  gold  to  all  the 
Roman  clergy  and  nobles,  t  and  of  silver  to  the  people. 

*  Turner,  Book  IV.,^ — not  a  vestige  of  hint  from  the  stupid  Enghsh- 
man,  what  the  Pope  wanted  with  crown,  sword,  or  image !  My  own  guess 
would  be,  that  it  meant  an  offering  of  the  entire  household  strength, 
in  war  and  peace,  of  the  Saxon  nation,— their  crown,  their  sword,  their 
household  gods,  Irminsul  and  Irminsula,  their  feasting,  and  their  robes. 

f  Again,  what  does  this  mean?  Gifts  of  honour  to  the  Pope's  imme- 
diate attendants — silver  to  all  Rome  ?  Does  the  modern  reader  think  this 
is  buying  little  Alfred's  consecration  too  dear,  or  that  Leo  is  selling  the 
Holy  Ghost? 

^  [See  Sharon  Turner,  p.  487.] 

2  [In  the  pictures,  for  instance,  of  Giotto  and  Titian :  see  Vol.  XXIII.  pp.  320- 
321.] 

3  [Sharon  Turner,  eh.  iv.  ;  vol.  i.  p.  490.] 

XXXIII.  ^  ^ 


498         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


No  idle  sacrifices  or  symbols,  these  gifts  of  courtesy! 
The  Saxon  King  rebuilt  on  the  highest  hill  that  is  bathed 
by  Tiber,  the  Saxon  street  and  school,  the  Borgo,^  of  whose 
miraculously  arrested  burning,  Raphael's  fresco  preserves  the 
story  to  this  day/  And  further  he  obtained  from  Leo  the 
liberty  of  all  Saxon  men  from  bonds  in  penance ; — a  first 
phase  this  of  Magna  Charta,  obtained  more  honourably, 
from  a  more  honourable  person,  than  that  document,  by 
which  Englishmen  of  this  day  suppose  they  live,  move, 
and  have  being.  ^ 

106.  How  far  into  Alfred's  soul,  at  seven  years  old, 
sank  any  true  image  of  what  Rome  was,  and  had  been ; 
of  what  her  Lion  Lord  was,  who  had  saved  her  from  the 
Saracen,  and  her  Lion  Lord  had  been,  who  had  saved  her 
from  the  Hun ;  ^  and  what  this  Spiritual  Dominion  was,  and 
was  to  be,  which  could  make  and  unmake  kings,  and  save 
nations,  and  put  armies  to  flight ;  I  leave  those  to  say, 
who  have  learned  to  reverence  childhood.  This,  at  least,  is 
sure,  that  the  days  of  Alfred  were  bound  each  to  each, 
not  only  by  their  natural  piety,*  but  by  the  actual  presence 

*  "  Quae  in  eorum  lingua  Burgus  dicitur, — the  place  where  it  was 
situated  was  called  the  Saxon  street,  Saxonum  vicus "  (Anastasius,  quoted 
by  Turner  "^).  There  seems  to  me  some  evidence  in  the  scattered  passages 
I  have  not  time  to  collate,  that  at  this  time  the  Saxon  Burg,  or  tower, 
of  a  village,  included  the  idea  of  its  school. 


1  [The  fresco  called  Incendio  del  Borgo  in  the  "Stanza  dell'  Incendio"  in  the 
Vatican.  It  represents  the  destruction  of  the  suburb,  or  Citta  Leonina,  in  a.d.  847, 
then  inhabited  by  the  Anglo-Saxon  pilgrims  and  called  by  them  Burgus.  Accord- 
ing to  tradition,  the  fire  was  approaching  the  V^atican  when  the  Pope  Leo  IV. 
miraculously  arrested  its  progress  by  prayer  and  the  sign  of  the  cross.  For 
another  reference  to  tlie  tradition,  see  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  §  82  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

2  [Acts  xvii.  28.1 

^  [The  victory  of  Leo  IV.  over  the  Saracens  at  Ostia  is  the  subject  of  another 
painting  in  the  Vatican  (by  Giovanni  da  Udine) ;  and  the  success  of  Leo  I.  in 
preventing  Attila's  entrance  into  Rome  (a.d.  453),  of  a  third  (by  Raphael).] 

*  [Wordsworth  :  lines  (from  the  earlier  poem  on  the  Rainbow)  prefixed  to  Inti- 
mations of  Immortality: — 

"  The  Child  is  Father  of  the  Man  ; 
And  I  could  wish  my  days  to  be 
Bound  each  to  each  by  natural  view."] 

'°  [Sharon  Turner,  ch.  iv.  ;  vol.  i.  p.  491.] 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY 


and  appeal  to  his  heart,  of  all  that  was  then  in  the  world 
most  noble,  beautiful,  and  strong  against  Death. 

In  this  living  Book  of  God  he  had  learned  to  read, 
thus  early ;  and  with  perhaps  nobler  ambition  than  of  get- 
ting the  prize  of  a  gilded  psalm-book  at  his  mother's  knee, 
as  you  are  commonly  told  of  him.'    V/hat  sort  of  psalm- 
book  it  was,  however,  you  may  see  from  this  leaf  in  my 
hand.    For,  as  his  father  and  he  returned  from  Rome  that 
j  year,  they  stayed  agair   at  the  Court  of  Charlemagne's 
I  grandson,  whose  daughter,  the  Princess  Judith,  Ethelwulph 
was  wooing  for   Queen  of  England  (not  queen-consort, 
I  merely,  but  crowned  queen,  of  authority  equal  to  his  own). 
From  whom  Alfred  was  like  enough  to  have  had  a  reading 
lesson  or  two  out  of  her  father's  Bible;  and  like  enough, 
the  little  prince,  to  have  stayed  her  hand  at  this  bright 
leaf  of  it,  the  Lion-leaf,  bearing  the  symbol  of  the  Lion  of 
the  tribe  of  Judah.^ 

107.  You  cannot,  of  course,  see  anything  but  the  glitter- 
ing from  where  you  sit ;  nor  even  if  you  afterwards  look 
at  it  near,  will  you  find  a  figure  the  least  admirable  or 
impressive  to  you.  It  is  not  like  Landseer's  Lions  in 
Trafalgar  Square  ;  nor  like  Tenniel's  in  Punch ;  still  less 
like  the  real  ones  in  Regent's  Park.  Neither  do  I  show 
it  you  as  admirable  in  any  respect  of  art,  other  than  that 
of  skilfullest  illumination.  I  show  it  you,  as  the  most  in- 
teresting Gothic  type  of  the  imagination  of  Lion  ;  which, 
after  the  Roman  Eagle,  possessed  the  minds  of  all  Euro- 
pean warriors;  until,  as  they  themselves  grew  selfish  and 
cruel,  the  symbols,  which  at  first  meant  heaven-sent  victory, 
or  the  strength  and  presence  of  some  Divine  spirit,  became 
to  them  only  the  signs  of  their  own  pride  or  rage :  the 

1  [See  the  passage  from  Sharon  Turner  quoted  by  Ruskin  in  Vol.  XII. 
p.  476.] 

2  [An  account  of  the  "Bible  of  Charles  the  Bald"— in  the  National  Library  at 
Paris— will  be  found  in  Professor  J.  O.  Westwood's  PalceograpUa  Sacra  Pictoria, 
1845,  Plate  22,  where,  however,  the  page  here  referred  to  is  not  reproduced  The 
Bible  was  presented  to  the  Emperor,  grandson  of  Charlemagne,  by  Count  Vivian 
and  his  brethren,  monks  of  St.  Martin  of  Tours.] 


500        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


victor  raven  of  Corvus^  sinks  into  the  shamed  falcon  of 
Marmion,  and  the  lion-heartedness  which  gave  the  glory 
and  the  peace  of  the  gods  to  Leonidas,^  casts  the  glory 
and  the  might  of  kinghood  to  the  dust  before  Chains."^ 

That  death,  6th  April,  1199,  ended  the  advance  of  Eng- 
land begun  by  Alfred,  under  the  pure  law  of  Religious 
Imagination.  She  began,  already,  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, to  be  decoratively,  instead  of  vitally,  rehgious.  The 
history  of  the  Religious  Imagination  expressed  between 
Alfred's  time  and  that  of  Coeur  de  Lion,  in  this  symbol 
of  the  Lion  only,  has  material  in  it  rather  for  all  my  seven 
lectures  ^  than  for  the  closing  section  of  one ;  but  I  must 
briefly  specify  to  you  the  main  sections  of  it.  I  will  keep 
clear  of  my  favourite  number  seven,^  and  ask  you  to  recol- 
lect the  meaning  of  only  Five,  Mythic  I^ions. 

108.  First  of  all,  in  Greek  art,  remember  to  keep  your- 
selves clear  about  the  difference  between  the  Lion  and  the 
Gorgon. 

The  Gorgon  is  the  power  of  evil  in  heaven,  conquered 
by  Athena,  and  thenceforward  becoming  her  a3gis,  when 
she  is  herself  the  inflictor  of  evil.  Her  helmet  is  then  the 
helmet  of  Orcus.^ 

But  the  Lion  is  the  power  of  death  on  earth,  conquered 
by  Heracles,  and  becoming  thenceforward  both  his  helmet 

*  Fors  Clavigera,  March  1871,  p.  19-^  Yet  read  the  precediiif:^  pages, 
and  learn  the  truth  of  the  lion  heart,  while  you  uiourii  its  pride.  Note 
especially  his  absolute  law  against  usury. 


^  [For  Marcus  Valerius,  surnanied  Corvus  or  Ilaveii,  from  the  story  of  the  bird 
that  helped  him  to  victory  in  single  combat  with  a  Gaul,  see  Livy',  vii.  26,  27. 
For  ^'the  shamed  falcon,"  see  the  story  of  Marmion,  and  particularly  canto  iii. 
stanza  31  :  ^"^The  falcon-crest  was  soiled  with  clay."] 

2  [For  references  to  Leonidas  as  a  typical  hero,  see  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  354, 
Vol.  XXVI.  p.  116,  and  General  Index.]  ' 

3  [For  the  programme  of  tlie  intended  Seven  Lectures,  see  above,  p.  413.] 

*  [See  Vol.  I.  p.  451,  Vol.  VIII.  p.  138,  and  Vol.  XXVII.  pp.  82,  588.] 

^  [For  the  Gorgon  on  the  tegis  of  Athena  in  anger,  see  Vol.  XIX.  p.  353, 
and  Vol.  XX.  p.  142.  In  "  the  helmet  of  Orcus,"  Ruskin  seems  to  refer  to 
Iliad,  V.  845.] 

•  [The  reference  is  to  the  original  edition  of  Letter  3.  See  now  Vol.  XXVII. 
p.  69;  and  for  Richard  Coeur-de-Lion's  law  against  usury,  p.  54.] 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY 


and  «gis.'  Ail  ordinary  architectural  lion  sculpture  is  de- 
rived from  the  Heraclean. 

Then  the  Christian  Lions  are,  first,  the  Lion  of  the 
Tribe  of  Judah— Christ  Himself  as  Captain  and  Judge: 
j  **He  shall  rule  the  nations  with  a  rod  of  iron,"^  (the 
I  opposite  power  of  His  adversary,  is  rarely  intended  in 
sculpture  unless  in  association  with  the  serpent — **  inculcabis 
supra  leonem  et  aspidem ")  ;  ^  secondly,  the  Lion  of  St. 
Mark,  the  power  of  the  Gospel  going  out  to  conquest; 
thirdly,  the  Lion  of  St.  Jerome,  the  wrath  of  the  brute 
creation  changed  into  love  by  the  kindness  of  man ;  ^  and, 
I  fourthly,  the  Lion  of  the  Zodiac,  which  is  the  Lion  of 
Egypt  ^  and  of  the  Lombardic  pillar-supports  in  Italy; 
these  four,  if  you  remember,  with  the  Nemean  Greek 
one,  five  altogether,  will  give  you,  broadly,  interpretation 
of  nearly  all  Lion  symbolism  in  great  art.  How  they 
degenerate  into  the  British  door  knocker,  I  leave  you  to 
determine  for  yourselves,  with  such  assistances  as  I  may 
be  able  to  suggest  to  you  in  my  next  lecture;^  but,  as  the 
grotesqueness  of  human  history  plans  it,  there  is  actually  a 
connection  between  that  last  degradation  of  the  Leonine 
symbol,  and  its  first  and  noblest  significance. 

109.  You  see  there  are  letters  round  this  golden  Lion 
of  Alfred's  spelling-book,  which  his  princess  friend  was  likely 
enough  to  spell  for  him.    They  are  two  Latin  hexameters : — 

Hie  Leo,  surgendo,  portas  confregit  Averni 

Qui  nunquam  dormit,  nusquam  dormitat,  in  aevum. 

(This  Lion,  rising,  burst  the  gates  of  Death: 
This,  who  sleeps  not,  nor  shall  sleep,  for  ever.) 

1  [For  Hercules  and  his  victory  over  the  Nemean  lion,  compare  Vol.  XIX. 
p.  SB'S,  and  above,  pp.  119,  120  ;  for  his  lion  crest,  see  Vol.  XXII.  p.  277.] 

2  [Revelation  xii.  5  ;  for  the  Lion  of  the  Tribe  of  Judah,  see  Genesis  xlix.  9.] 
^  [Psalms  xci.  13  :  see  Vol.  XI.  p.  93,  and  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  431.] 

*  [Compare  St.  Mark's  Rest,  §  179  (Vol.  XXIV.  p.  348) ;  and  Bible  of  Amiens, 
above,  pp.  119-120.]  ,     ^  , 

^  [See  Vol.  IV.  p.  803,  and  Vol.  XII.  p.  Ill  ;  and  for  an  example  of  the 
"Lombardic  pillar  supports,"  Plate  L  in  Vol.  XX.  (p.  214).] 

«  [The  lecture  was  delivered  November  15  and  17,  1884,  but  not  pubhshed  by 
Ruskin.  For  a  report  of  it,  see  below,  p.  505 ;  but  the  Lion  symbolism  was  not 
again  mentioned.] 


502         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


Now  here  is  the  Christian  change  of  the  Heraclean 
conquest  of  Death  into  Christ's  Resurrection.  Samson's 
bearing  away  the  gates  of  Gaza  is  another  like  symbol/ 
and  to  the  mind  of  Alfred,  taught,  whether  by  the  Pope 
Leo  for  his  schoolmaster,  or  by  the  great-granddaughter 
of  Charlemagne  for  his  schoolmistress,-  it  represented,  as 
it  did  to  all  the  intelligence  of  Christendom,  Christ  in 
His  own  first  and  last.  Alpha  and  Omega,  description  of 
Himself, — 

I  am  He  that  liveth  and  was  dead,  and  behold  I  am  alive  for  ever- 
more, and  have  the  keys  of  Hell  and  of  Death." 

And  in  His  servant  St.  John's  description  of  Him — 

''Who  is  the  Faithful  Witness  and  the  First-begotten  of  the  dead,  and 
the  Prince  of  the  kings  of  the  earth."  ^ 

110.  All  this  assuredly,  so  far  as  the  young  child,  con- 
secrated like  David,  the  youngest  of  his  brethren,^  conceived 
his  own  new  life  in  Earth  and  Heaven, — he  understood 
already  in  the  Lion  symbol.  But  of  all  this  I  had  no 
thought^'  when  I  chose  the  prayer  of  Alfred  as  the  type  of 
the  Religion  of  his  era,^  in  its  dwelling,  not  on  the  deliver- 
ance from  the  punishment  of  sin,  but  from  the  poisonous 
sleep  and  death  of  it.  AVill  you  ever  learn  that  prayer 
again, — youths  who  are  to  be  priests,  and  knights,  and 
kings  of  England,  in  these  the  latter  days  ?  when  the  gospel 
of  Eternal  Death  is  preached  here  in  Oxford  to  you  for 
the  Pride  of  Truth  ?  and  "  the  mountain  of  the  Lord's 

*  The  reference  to  the  Bible  of  Charles  le  Chauve  was  added  to  my 
second  lecture  (§  53),  in  correcting  the  press,  and  mistakenly  put  into  the 
text  instead  of  the  notes.^ 


See  Judges  xvi.] 
See  above,  p.  499.] 
Revelation  i.  18,  5.] 
1  Samuel  xvi.  12,  13  ;  xvii.  14.] 
^See  above,  p.  453.] 

Now  correctly  given  ;  see,  again,  p.  4.53  n.] 


IV.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  FANCY  503 

House"'  has  become  a  Golgotha,  and  the  "new  song 
before  the  throne"  sunk  into  the  rolHng  thunder  of  the 
death  rattle  of  the  Nations,  crying,  "O  Christ,  where  is 
Thy  Victory  !  " 


[The  lecture  as  delivered  was  from  §  102  to  the  end  different.  It  was  thus  re- 
ported in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  (and  Studies  in  Raskin,  pp.  250-251) :  

^^Mr.  Ruskin  then  passed  to  a  second  pleasure  of  imagination— not  any- 
longer  that  of  exalting  the  memory  of  dead  persons,  but  that  of  setting 
up  their  images  and  investing  them  with  sanctity.  '  Fors  Clavigera '  came 
in  the  form  of  a  letter  from  Miss  Alexander  Francesca ')  to  clench 
this  matter  with  an  illustration  from  modern  Italian  life.  In  this  letter 
Miss  Alexander  describes  the  Madonna  whom  she  saw  enshrined  in  an 
orphanage  as  a  stout  heavy  person  in  impossible  drapery— much  improved 
of  late  in  cleanliness,  if  not  in  beauty  or  sanctity,  by  a  coating  of  white 
oil  paint.  One  of  the  girls  had  given  her  a  rose,  another  a  set  of  ear- 
rings. 'I  pierced  the  ears  myself/  added  the  Lady  Superior,  'with  a 
gimlet'  'There,'  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  'you  have  the  perfection  of  childlike 
imagination — making  everything  out  of  nothing.' 

"  Of  Saturday's  lecture  a  written  peroration  was  again  wanting,  and  the 
conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  was  shown  instead  in  two  pictures — 'the 
two  most  perfect  pictures  in  the  world.'  One  was  a  small  piece  from 
Tintoret's  Paradise  in  the  Ducal  Palace,  representing  the  group  of  St. 
Ambrose,  St.  Jerome,  St.  Gregory,  St.  Augustine,  and  behind  St.  Augus- 
tine '  his  mother  watching  him,  her  chief  joy  in  Paradise.'  There  was 
some  little  movement  of  laughter  among  the  audience  as  Mr.  Ruskin 
found  that  he  had  placed  the  sketch  upside  down.^  'But  it  is  little  matter,' 
he  added,  'for  in  Tintoret's  Paradise  you  have  heaven  all  round  you — a 
work  of  pure  imagination,  and  that,  too,  by  a  dyer's  son  in  Venice.'  The 
other  picture  was  the  Arundel  Society's  reproduction  ('a  Society  which 
has  done  more  for  us  than  we  have  any  notion  of)  of  the  altar-piece 
by  Giorgione,  in  his  native  hamlet  of  Castel  Franco.  'No  picture  in 
the  world  can  show  you  better  the  seeing  and  realizing  imagination  of 
Christian  painters.  Giorgione  in  no  wise  intends  you  to  suppose  that  the 
Madonna  ever  sat  thus  on  a  pedestal  with  a  coat  of  arms  upon  it,  or  that 
St.  George  and  St.  Francis  ever  stood,  or  do  now  stand,  in  that  manner 
beside  her  ;  but  that  a  living  Venetian  may,  in  such  vision,  most  deeply 
and  rightly  conceive  of  her  and  of  them.  As  such  this  picture  is  alone  in 
the  world,  as  an  imaginative  representation  of  Christianity,  with  a  monk 
and  a  soldier  on  either  side,  the  soldier  bearing  the  white  cross  of  ever- 
lasting peace  on  the  purple  ground  of  former  darkness." 

"  It  would  appear,"  added  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  by  way  of  supplement 
to  the  above  report,  "from  one  of  the  incidental  passages  of  autobiography 
in  Mr.  Ruskin's  lecture  on  Saturday,  that  he  is  as  much  a  victim  of  the 
demon  of  noise  as  was  his  master  Carlyle.  Among  other  passages  which 
he  read  was  one  from  Carlyle's  Frederick  the  Great,  in  which  it  is  told 
how  Adalbert,  Bishop  of  Prague,  was  sleeping  by  the  roadside  when  'a 
Bohemian  shepherd   chanced  to  pass  that  way,  warbling  something  on 


^  [Isaiah  ii.  2.  For  the  following  Bible  references,  see  Revelation  xiv.  3; 
1  Corinthians  xv.  55.] 

2  [See  Vol.  XX.  pp.  xxvi.-xxvii.] 


504 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


his  pipe,  as  he  wended  towards  lookiug  after  his  flock  ;  and  seeing  the 
sleeper  on  his  stone  pillow^  the  thoughtless  Czech  mischievously  hlew 
louder.'  Adalbert  awoke,  and  shrieked  in  his  fury,  ^Deafness  on  thee, 
man  cruel  to  the  human  sense  of  hearing  ! ' — or  words  to  that  effect. 
The  curse  was  punctually  fulfilled,  and  the  fellow  was  deaf  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  ^What  a  pity,'  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  'that  you  have  no  Bishop  Adal- 
bert in  Oxford  !  You  think  yourselves  very  musical,  with  your  twiddlings 
and  fiddlings  of  organs  after  service,  but  you  allow  that  beastly  hooter  " 
to  wake  me  every  morning,  and  so  to  make  life  among  you  intolerable  in 
these  days.'" 

The  letter  from  Francesca  referred  to  above  will  be  found  in  Fors  Clavigera, 
Letter  96  (Vol.  XXIX.  p.  526).  The  studies  (by  Signor  Alessandri)  from  the 
Paradise  are  at  Sheffield  (Vol.  XXX.  p.  199).  For  other  references  to  the 
Giorgione,  see  above,  p.  407  ;  Vol.  XI.  p.  240  7i,  ;  and  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  307  n. 
For  the  passage  from  Carlyle,  see  Friedrich,  Book  ii.  ch.  ii.] 


LECTURE  V 


PROTESTANTISM:  THE  PLEASURES  OF  TRUTH 
{Delivered  November  15  and  11 ,  1884) 

[This  lecture  was  not  published  by  Ruskin.  ITie  following  report  of  it 
(pp.  505-510)  is  mainly  reprinted  from  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  (and  PI  T. 
Cook's  Studies  in  Ruskin,  pp.  252-263) — "mainly/'  because  Raskin's  MS. 
notes  have  been  found  and  are  here  substituted  for  parts  of  the  first 
passages  in  the  report.] 

111.  The  space  of  history  in  Christendom,  represented  by  the  changes  in 
the  temper  of  England  which  I  propose  to  illustrate  in  this  lecture,  is 
not,  as  in  the  four  previous  ones,  definable  by  reigns  of  Kings,  because  it 
takes  place  in  different  parts  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Germany,  at  different 
times.  I  therefore  can  only  define  it  by  its  character,  calling  it  the  Period 
of  Protestantism,  that  is  to  say,  the  bearing  witness  for  spiritual  truth 
against  either  manifest  spiritual  falsehood,  or  the  danger  of  falsehood ; 
and  the  bearing  witness  for  justice  against  manifest  iniquity,  or  the  danger 
of  it, — so  fortifying  the  certainly  known  truths  of  religion  against  the 
fancies  or  fictions  of  past  Priests,  and  securing  the  liberties — so  called — 
of  the  subject  against  the  cruelties  or  insolences  of  past  Kings. 

112,  These  two  Protests  are  absolutely  distinct,  and  merely  by  chance 
coincident. 

The  first  Protest,  for  the  Truth  of  Religion,  is  in  all  countries  that 
properly  termed  the  Reformation. 

The  second  Protest,  that  for  the  Rights  of  the  Subject,  is  that  properly 
called  and  known  in  all  countries  as  the  Revolution. 

The  Reformation  means  in  the  sum  of  it — John  Knox;  the  Revolution, 
John  Hampden. 1 

John  Knox  says,  I  will  not  be  cheated  in  religion.  John  Hampden,  1 
will  not  be  taxed  in  pocket.  It  indeed  happens  continually  that  the 
Protestant  is  fighting  at  once  against  lies  and  taxation,  and  then  he  be- 
comes a  Protestant  to  the  second  power,^  just  as  it  happens  also  that  a 
Catholic  may  be  fighting  at  once  for  lies  and  taxation,  and  then  he  is  a 
Catholic  to  the  second  power.  But  the  quarrels  are  totally  distinct  always. 
The  Religion  of  Jeanie  Deans  against  that  of  Catherine  Seyton  ^  means  the 

1  [In  the  report,  "John  Knox,  or  if  you  will,  Luther;  but  I  like  Knox  better."] 

2  [The  first  draft  of  the  MS.  has  "a  Protestant  squared"  (instead  of  "to  the 
second  power "),  and  this  must  have  been  the  word  used  by  Ruskin,  which  appears 
as  "a  Protestant  squire"  in  the  report.] 

3  [For  other  references  to  Jeanie  Deans,  see  above,  p.  488 ;  to  Catherme  feeyton 
{Abbot),  Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,  §  109  (Vol.  XXXIV.).] 

505 


506         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


Reformation  ;  the  Action  of  Major  Bridgenorth  against  Peveril  of  the  Peak 
means  the  Revolution. ^  The  Reformers  and  Revolutionists  think  they  have 
at  present  got  it  all  their  own  way.  But  we  Catholics — I  call  myself  one 
for  simplicity's  sake,  being  on  their  side — believe  that  a  day  will  yet  come 
when  we  shall  again  see  visions  of  things  that  are  not  as  though  they 
were,  and  be  able,  with  Edward  the  Confessor,  to  tax  the  whole  Kingdom 
at  a  blow  one  tenth  of  its  property  ^  to  build  a  Church  with  a  weathercock 
on  the  top  of  it,  emergent  into  the  sky  from  the  filth  of  London. 

lis.  Now  all  the  beauty  of  Protestantism  you  will  find  embodied  by 
two  great  masters  of  historical  symbol :  namely,  by  Scott  in  the  character 
of  Jeanie  Deans,  standing  for  the  truth,  against  far  more  than  her  own 
life,  against  her  sister's,  and  in  Continental  literature  by  Gotthelf  in  the 
character  of  Freneli  in  Ulric  the  Fanner^  compelling  against  her  husband's 
avarice  the  restitution  of  the  money  unjustly  possessed  by  him.  All  the 
beauty  of  Protestantism  is  in  these,  and  I  leave  you  to  study  it  in  them. 
Mv  intention  to-day  is  to  show  you  the  limits  of  Protestantism,  and  the 
narrowness  of  the  truth  it  possesses  as  compared  with  the  infinitude  and 
beauty  of  the  Spectral  pleasures  of  Catholicism. 

[Here  Ruskin's  MS.  breaks  off  with  "  So  much  for  plan — the  execution 
only  as  I  have  time."  Then  follow  a  few  notes  for  the  remainder  of  tho 
lecture ;  from  this  point,  therefore,  the  report  is  used.] 

114.  Leaving  the  beauty  of  Protestantism,  the  pleasures  of  truth,  to 
the  description  of  them  in  these  two  novels,  Mr.  Ruskin  himself  turned 
to  the  other  side  of  the  question,  and  proposed  to  show  rather  the  narrow- 
ness of  its  rigid  truth  in  comparison  with  the  beauty  of  the  spectral  pheno- 
mena in  which  Catholicism  delights.  For  this  purpose  he  had  brought 
with  him.  two  pictures — one  by  Turner,  the  other  a  copy  from  Carpaccio. 
The  Turner  was  a  large  water-colour  drawing,  measuring  somewhere  about 
20  inches  by  15  inches,  in  his  early  or  brown  period,  of  a  stream  and  a 
grove.  There,"  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  pointing  to  it,  "  is  a  spectral  grove  for 
you,  the  very  eiSwXoi/  of  a  grove.  There  never  was  such  a  grove  or  such 
a  stream.  You  may  photograph  every  grove  in  the  world,  and  never  will 
you  get  so  ghostly  a  one  as  this.  I  cannot  tell  you  where  it  is ;  I  can 
only  swear  to  you  that  it  never  existed  anywhere  except  in  Turner's  head. 
It  is  the  very  best  Turner  drawing  I  ever  saw  of  this  heroic  period,  the 
period  in  which  he  painted  the  '  Garden  of  the  Hesperides '  and  '  Apollo 
Killing  the  Python.'^    I  picked  it  up  by  pure  chance,  the  other  day,  in 

1  [The  report  has  : — 

refer  to  Scott,  now  and  always,  for  historical  illustration,  because 
he  is  far  and  away  the  best  writer  of  history  we  have.  Our  only  his- 
torians (ordinarily  so  called)  are  Carlyle,  Froude,  and  Helps,  but  none 
of  them  can  see  all  round  a  thing  as  Scott  does.  Froude  does  not  even 
know  whether  he  is  a  Catholic  or  a  Protestant ;  Carlyle  is  first  the  one, 
and  then  the  other  ;  while  Helps  is  deficient  because  he  never  understands 
Catholicism  at  all." 
Compare  §  124  (p.  512).] 

[See  Stanley's  Memorials  of  Westminster  Abbey,  p.  22.] 
^  [The  continuation  of  UMc  the  Farm  Servant:  see  Vol.  XXXII.  p.  xxxv.] 
[Nos.  477  and  488  in  the  National  Gallery  :  see  Vol.  XIIL  pp.  113,  122.] 


V.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  TRUTH  507 

the  shop  of  my  friend  Mr.  Sewening,  of  Duke  Street,  St.  James's,  to 
whose  excellent  judgment,  by  the  way,  I  now  refer  any  pictures  which 
are  sent  to  me  to  verify. i  He  thought  it  might  be  a  Turner,  and  asked 
me  £4)0  for  it.  I  was  sure  it  was,  and  gave  him  50  guineas,  and  I  now 
present  it  to  your  gallery  at  Oxford,  to  be  an  idol  to  you,  I  hope,  for 
evermore."  ^ 

115.  '^And  here,"  added  Mr.  Ruskin,  turning  to  the  other  picture, 
''is  a  Spectral  Girl — an  idol  of  a  girl— never  was  such  a  girl.  Ask  the 
sweetest  you  can  find  to  your  college  gardens,  show  your  PhylHs  the 
brightest  flowers  qua  crines  religata  fulget,^  she  will  not  look  Hke  this 
one."  *  This  was  a  copy  of  the  head  in  Carpaccio's  Dream  of  St.  Ursula," 
the  picture  of  which  Mr.  Ruskin  has  written  so  much  in  Fors  Clavigera 
and  his  Venetian  guide-books,^  and  which  was  largely  referred  to,  by  the 
way,  by  Mr.  Wingfield,^  in  the  recent  revival  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  at  the 
Lyceum,  for  the  details  of  a  Venetian  interior.  Never  was  twisted  hair 
like  hers — twisted,  like  that  of  all  Venetian  girls,  in  memory  of  the  time 
when  they  first  made  their  hair  into  ropes  for  the  fugitive  ships  at 
Aquileia.  You  will  never  see  such  hair,  nor  such  peace  beneath  it  on  the 
brow — Pax  Vohiscum — the  peace  of  heaven,  of  infancy,  and  of  death.  No 
one  knows  who  she  is  or  where  she  lived.  She  is  Persephone  at  rest 
below  the  earth  ;  she  is  Proserpine  at  play  above  the  ground.  She  is 
Ursula,  the  gentlest  yet  the  rudest  of  little  bears ;  a  type  in  that,  perhaps, 
of  the  moss  rose,  or  of  the  rose  spinosissima,  with  its  rough  little  buds. 
She  is  in  England,  in  Cologne,  in  Venice,  in  Rome,  in  eternity,  living 
everywhere,  dying  everywhere,  the  most  intangible  yet  the  most  practical 
of  all  saints, — queen,  for  one  thing,  of  female  education,  when  once  her 
legend  is  rightly  understood.  This  sketch  of  her  head  is  the  best  drawing 
I  ever  made.  Carpaccio's  picture  is  hung,  like  all  good  pictures,  out  of 
sight,  seven  feet  above  the  ground ;  but  the  Venetian  Academy  had  it 
taken  down  for  me,  and  I  traced  every  detail  in  it  accurately  to  a  hair's 
breadth.  It  took  me  a  day's  hard  work  to  get  that  spray  of  silver  hair 
loosening  itself  rightly  from  the  coil,  and  twelve  times  over  had  I  to 
try  the  mouth.  And  to-day,  assuming  Miss  Shaw  Lefevre's^  indulgence, 
I  present  it  to  the  girls  of  Somerville  Hall.  Perhaps  the  picture  of  a 
princess's  room,  of  which  it  is  a  part,  may  teach  the  young  ladies  there 
not  to  make  their  rooms  too  pretty — to  remember  that  they  come  to 
Oxford  to  be  uncomfortable  and  to  suffer  a  little — to  learn  whatever  can 
be  learnt  in  Oxford,  which  is  not  much,  and  even  to  live  as  little  Ursulas, 
in  rough  gardens,  not  on  lawns  made  smooth  for  tennis. 

116.  "Such  is  the  lesson  of  the  legend  of  St.  Ursula;  and  now,"  con- 
tinued Mr.  Ruskin,  ''I  must  tell  you  somewhat  of  a  Doge  of  Venice  who 

^  [For  a  circular  to  this  efFect,  issued  by  Ruskin  at  the  time,  see  Vol.  XXXIV.] 

2  [The  drawing  was,  however,  afterwards  withdrawn,  and  is  now  at  Brantwood: 
see  Vol.  XXX.  p.  82  and  n.    For  another  reference  to  it,  see  below,  p.  534.] 

3  [Horace,  Odes,  iv.  11,  o:  quoted  also  in  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  Ixxii.] 

^  [The  report  has  here  been  shghtly  corrected  from  Ruskin's  MS.  notes.] 
^   See  the  references  giv^en  in  Vol.  XXIV.  p.  li.] 

^  [Mr.  Lewis  Wingfield,  who  assisted  Irving  in  the  scenery  for  this  revival.] 
'  [Now  placed  on  the  hue:  see  Vol.  XXIV.  pp.  liii,-hv.] 
®  [Then  Principal  of  Somerville  Hall.] 


508         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


lived  by  the  light  of  superstitions  such  as  this,  a  Catholic  and  a  brave  man 
withal,  Cattolico  uomo  e  midace,  'the  servant  of  God  and  of  St.  Michael.' "i 
To  avoid  mistakes  to-day  and  corrections  to-morrow,^  Mr.  Ruskin  craved  per- 
mission to  read  again  from  his  Venetian  handbook,  St.  Mark's  Rest,  which 
had  always  been  meant  for  reading,^  and  had  now  been  retouched. 

The  longest  of  these  new  touches  was  suggested  by  The  Truth  about 
the  Navy/'^  which  Mr.  Ruskin  had  been  reading,  he  said,  in  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette ;  from  which  he  gathered  that  the  British  people  having  spent  several 
hundreds  of  millions  on  blowing  iron  bubbles — "the  earth  hath  bubbles,  as 
the  water  has,  and  these  are  of  them"^ — would  soon  be  busy  blowing 
more.  Nothing  could  be  more  tragically  absurd  than  the  loss  of  the 
Captain  and  the  London,  unless  it  were  the  loss  of  the  Etirydice^ — without 
her  Orpheus  then.  There  was  nothing  the  matter,  except  that  Govern- 
ments were  donkeys  enough  to  build  in  iron  instead  of  wood,  just  in  order 
that  the  ironmongers  might  get  their  commissions.  They  were  honest 
enough,  these  Governments,  but  they  allowed  the  ironmongers  to  work 
them  round  like  screws.  Whoever  heard  of  a  Venetian  man-of-war  going 
over  ?  A  gale  was  nothing  at  all  to  a  wooden  ship ;  Venice  would  have 
laughed  at  it,  rejoiced  in  it.  They  never  heard  of  a  Venetian  being  upset 
or  making  for  the  shore.  Why.^  Because  they  had  been  broken  in  to  the 
life  of  the  rough  sea.  You  think  that  you  know  what  boating  is ;  but 
why  don't  you  practise  in  the  open  sea,  as  the  Venetians  did,"  instead  of 
spoiling  the  Isis,  here  ? "  But  with  the  London,  she  was  crossing  the  Bay 
of  Biscay  when  it  got  a  little  rough  ;  the  wind  blew  the  bulwarks  down, 
and  down  the  ship  went  bodily.  The  only  grand  thing  connected  with  it 
was  that  the  captain,  looking  over  the  bulwarks  as  the  last  boat  was 
launched,  gave  the  crew  their  latitude,  and  said  he  would  go  down  with 
his  ship,  and  he  did.  Mr.  Ruskin  had  no  patience,  in  face  of  disasters 
like  those  of  the  London  and  the  Captain,  with  all  the  talk  about  our 
splendid  British  seamanship.  It  was  bombastic  English  blarney — not  Irish, 
for  there  was  always  wit  in  an  Irish  bull,  but  only  a  double  blunder  in  an 
English  one — all  that  talk  about  sweeping  the  fleets  of  all  other  nations 

1  [See  St.  Mark's  Rest,  §  3  (Vol.  XXIV.  ]).  208).] 
^   For  the  reference  here,  see  above,  p.  481  n.] 
^  [See  also  above,  p.  481  n.] 

*  [A  series  of  articles  (afterwards  republished  in  pamphlet  form  as  an  "extra"), 
calling  attention  to  the  state  of  the  navy  and  demanding  additional  expenditure — 
a  demand  complied  with  in  December  1884,  when  Lord  Northbrook,  First  Lord  of 
the  Admiralty,  applied  for  5^  millions  for  the  purpose.] 

^  [Macbeth,  Act  i.  sc.  3.]  " 

^  [For  other  references  to  the  loss  of  the  Captain,  see  Candida  Casa,  §  18  (above, 
p.  217);  and  to  that  of  the  London,  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  §  107  (Vol.  XVIII. 
p.  474  and  n.).  ITie  Eurydice  rolled  over  (March  24,  1878)  at  the  back  of  the 
Isle  of  Wight  in  a  squall,  as  described  by  R.  C.  Leslie  (an  eye-witness)  in  his 
Sea-Painters  Log,  1886,  p.  69.] 

'  [It  is  said  that  the  successful  row  of  an  Oxford  crew  on  July  25,  1885,  from 
Dover  to  Calais,  with  Mr.  W.  H.  Grenfell  (Lord  Desborough)  as  stroke,  was  inspired 
by  this  passage.  The  boat  wtis  a  clinker-built,  sliding-seat  eight-oar,  with  stringed 
rowlocks.  "  We  got  across,"  says  Lord  Desborough,  "  in  4  hrs.  20  min.  We  filled 
several  times,  and  bailed  the  water  out  with  jam-pots  with  which  I  provided  the 
crew  ;  sometimes  her  bows  were  a  long  way  in  the  air,  and  sometimes  her  stern. 
The  Mayor  of  Calais  received  us  with  a  Vin  d'Honneur."] 


V.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  TRUTH  509 


off  the  seas.  '^You  went  under  Napier  and  knocked  your  heads  against 
Cronstadt/  and  Cronstadt  cared  no  more  for  you  than  if  you  had  been 
a  flight  of  swallows  or  sparrows.  Then  you  went  and  knocked  your  heads 
against  Sebastopol ;  and,  in  spite  of  all  the  lies  in  the  newspapers,  every 
one  knew  that  the  British  fleet  had  been  thoroughly  well  licked.  And 
now  you  have  been  bombarding  Alexandria,  and  narrowly  escaped  being 
done  for  by  a  few  Arabs.2  So  much  for  the  proud  supremacy  of  the  British 
navy  and  its  ironclads."  They  might  say  that  all  this  was  irrelevant;  but 
there  was  no  finer  art  than  ship-building,  and  they  would  find  that  out 
when  he  set  them  to  draw  ships;  they  were  only  drawing  shells  now. 
Even  a  draughtsman  could  not  draw  two  sides  of  a  ship  alike ;  nobody 
but  Turner  ever  did.  They  might  say  one  of  the  subjects  forbidden  to 
him  was  political  economy  ;  but  that  subject,  too,  would  be  forced  on  them 
all  pretty  soon.  For  when  all  the  present  ships  were  destroyed  the  new 
ones  would  also  go  "  snap "  in  like  fashion. 

117.  The  chapter  from  which  Mr.  Ruskin  was  reading  when  this 
parenthesis  came  in  is  the  one  entitled  "The  Burden  of  Tyre,"  and  tells 
the  story  of  Domenico  Michiel,  the  Nelson  of  Venice,  the  doge  who 
brought  back  in  1126,  from  his  wars  against  the  Saracens,  the  famous 
pillars  of  the  Piazzetta.  Besides  them,  he  brought  the  dead  bodies  of 
St.  Donato  and  St.  Isidore ;  for  the  Venice  of  his  day  was  intensely 
covetous,  not  only  of  money,  though  she  loved  that  too,  nor  of  kingdom, 
nor  of  pillars  of  marble  and  granite,  but  "also  and  quite  principally  of 
the  relics  of  good  people,  of  their  dart  to  dust,  ashes  to  ashes."  He 
himself  lies  buried  behind  the  altar  of  the  church  of  S.  Giorgio  Maggiore, 
and  on  his  tomb  there  was  this  inscription  written,  "Whosoever  thou  art, 
who  cometh  to  behold  this  tomb  of  his,  bow  thyself  down  before  God, 
because  of  him."  ^ 

118.  "That,"  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  "is  the  feeling  of  all  ^  Old  Catholics'  in 
the  presence  of  a  shrine ;  they  worship  not  the  hero  or  the  saint,  but 
'God  because  of  him.'  Against  all  this  comes  the  witness  of  Protes- 
tantism, partly  honest,  partly  hypocritical,  with  good  knowledge  of  a  few 
minor  things,  but  ignorant  hatred  of  all  above  and  beyond  itself.  Here 
I  have  for  you  a  type  of  the  honest  but  not  liberally  minded  Protestant," 
said  Mr.  Ruskin,  disclosing  a  sketch  of  a  little  porker.^  "The  Httle  pig 
walks  along,  you  see,  knowing  every  inch  of  its  ground,  having  in  its 
snout  a  capital  instrument  for  grubbing  up  things.  You  may  be  shocked, 
perhaps,  at  my  selection  of  this  animal  for  the  type  of  a  religious  sect ; 
but  if  you  could  but  realize  all  the  beautiful  things  which  the  insolence 
of  Protestantism  has  destroyed,  you  would  think  surely  the  Gadarene 
swine  5  too  good  for  it.  But  my  illustration  is,  at  f.ny  rate,  appropriate 
as  significant  of  the  Protestant  and  Evangelical  art  which  can  draw  a  pig 

1  [For  another  allusion  to  this  expedition,  see  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  §  157 
(Vol.  XVIII.  p.  511  and  n.).] 

2  [The  bombardment  of  Alexandria,  by  the  British  fleet  under  Admn-al  Sir 
Beauchamp  Seymour,  July  11,  1882.] 

'  [See  Vol.  XXIV.  pp.  210-217.    Phrases  in  the  text  above  which  do  not  quite 
accord  with  St.  Mark's  Best  were  added  by  Ruskin  in  reading  the  passage.] 
*  [Probably  a  copy  from  Bewick ;  see  Vol.  XXI.  p.  91.] 
5  [See  Mark  v.] 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


to  perfection,  but  never  a  pretty  lady."  ^  Mr.  Ruskin  then  passed  on  to 
the  hypocritical  Protestant,  and  produced  as  the  type  of  him  a  sketch 
in  black  and  white  of  a  truly  repulsive  Mr.  Stiggins  with  a  concertina. 

119.  These  two  sketches  were  to  illustrate  the  religious  ghostly  ideal. 
The  heroic  ideal  was' illustrated  from  poetry.  The  faith  in  human  honour, 
taking  the  place  of  the  faith  in  religion,  which  is  the  groundwork  of  this 
ideal,  passes  into  the  noble  pride  of  the  true  knight ;  and  it  is  when  this 
noble  pride  passes  into  malignant  pride  that  the  Revolution  comes.  Of 
the  true  knight,  the  perfect  type  is  Douglas  in  The  Lady  of  the  Lake,^ 
"No  one  reads  Scott  now,"  Mr.  Ruskin  here  parenthetically  remarked, 
"and  I  am  going  to  send  his  poems  and  novels  by  the  gross  to  classes  in 
our  elementary  schools — not  for  prizes  to  be  awarded  by  competition,  but 
to  be  given  to  any  boy  or  girl  who  is  good  and  likes  to  read  poetry.  I 
should  like  to  see  the  children  draw  lots  for  the  books,  and  the  one  who 
wins  not  keep  the  book,  but  have  the  right  of  giving  it  away — a  very 
subtle  little  moral  lesson."  ^  Mr.  Ruskin  then  read  some  stanzas  from 
the  fifth  canto  of  The  Lady  of  the  Lake,  describing  the  burghers'  sports 
before  King  James  at  Stirling,  the  classical  passage  in  Scott  corresponding 
to  the  games  in  Virgil.  The  passage  is  typical,  too,  of  that  association 
with  his  dog,  his  horse,  and  his  falcon  which  is  a  mark  of  the  knight,  the 
clown  being  one  who  cannot  keep  these  animals,  or  does  not  know  how 
to  use  them.  It  was  very  bad  of  Douglas,  you  may  think,  to  knock  a 
man  down  for  the  sake  of  a  dog — a  creature  that  we  should  think 
nothing  of  torturing  nowadays  for  a  month  to  find  out  the  cause  of  a 
pimple  on  our  own  red  noses."  Mr,  Ruskin  then  went  on  to  the  stanzas 
which  he  wished  all  who  cared  to  please  him  at  once  to  learn  by  heart, 
the  stanzas  in  which 

"  W^ith  grief  the  noble  Douglas  saw 
The  commons  rise  against  tlie  law;" 

and  bade  them  hear 

"  Ere  j-et  for  me 
Ye  break  the  bands  of  fealty."  * 


[Among  Ruskin's  MSS.  of  notes,  etc.,  for  The  Pleasures  of  England  there 
are,  in  addition  to  tlie  Notes  above  mentioned  and  used  (p.  505),  two 
fragments  headed  "  Protestantism."  They  were  either  first  drafts  for  the 
lecture,  or  alternative  heginnings  of  a  revised  lecture  as  he  intended  to 
print  it.    These  fragments  now  follow  (pp.  510-520).] 

120.  All  the  youth  of  England,  but  chiefly  the  students  in  her  uni- 
versities, have  of  late  been  sorely  troubled  by  a  series  of  Protestant  His- 
torians of  the  type  of  Thomas  Babington  Macaulay,^  who  assume  for  the 

*  [For  this  remark  in  connexion  with  Bewick,  see  Art  of  England,  §  196 
(above,  p.  396).] 

^  [Compare  PriBterita,  i.  §  7.] 

^  [A  lesson  used  bv  Ruskin  in  his  May  Day  Festival  :  see  Vol.  XXX,  p.  338.] 

*  [See  stanzas  27,  28.] 
^  [See  above,  p.  444.] 


V.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  TRUTH 


only  safe  basis,  and  the  only  desirable  conclusion,  of  historical  study,  that 
the  British  Constitution  as  represented  by  an  election  for  the  borough  of 
Eatanswiin  and  the  public  dinner  and  speeches  following  the  success  of 
the  popular  candidate,  is  the  perfect  and  eternally-to-endure  consummation 
of  the  labours  of  united  mankind  in  the  pursuit  of  wisdom  and  truth; 
with  the  necessary  corollary  that  the  present  daily  life  of  a  British  citizen 
of  London  or  Manchester,  enlightened  by  the  Liberal  newspapers,  and 
cleansed  by  Pears's  soap,  is  the  admirablest  state  to  which  Humanity  can 
ever  hope  to  arrive  either  in  this  world  or  in  any  other. 

121.  I  received  two  somewhat  impressive  lessons  on  the  force  and 
universality  of  these  persuasions  just  on  leaving  Oxford  after  finishing  my 
course  of  lectures  in  1883,  and  again  on  leaving  London  in  the  spring 
of  1884  2 — in  both  cases  with  the  hope  of  pursuing  the  subject  of  our 
present  inquiries  in  the  comparative  peace  of  a  provincial  cathedral  town. 
From  Oxford  I  went  through  the  really  beautiful  country  which  is  traversed 
by  the  railway  line  through  Evesham,  and  under  the  Malvern  Hills,  to 
Worcester;  where  I  had  hopes  to  see  the  sunset  light  in  the  Cathedral 
aisles ;  but  was  in  time  only  to  have  its  doors  shut  in  my  face  at  six 
o'clock.  Turning  from  the  lateral  porch  of  the  inhospitable  shrine  towards 
the  Severn,  I  found  the  fall  of  the  bank,  or,  it  might  be  almost  called 
the  hillside,  from  the  west  front  of  the  Cathedral  to  the  river,  fenced 
in  by  the  modern  Artist  and  Beadle  with  more  iron  railings  than  would 
have  been  necessary  even  for  the  County  Bridewell.^  Meditating  bitterly 
on  these  symbols  and  illustrations  of  British  liberty  and  behaviour,  I  was 
nevertheless  disturbed  and  attracted  by  the  sugary  architecture  and  highly 
coloured  advertisements  of  a  flourishing  grocer's  window,  in  which  the 
lavished  heaps  of  tea  were  covered  with  an  African  battle  piece  out  of 
the  Illustrated  London  News  moralized  by  the  words  WE  WIN  in  illumi- 
nated capitals,  and  by  the  following  aphorism,  ascribed  to  the  sapience  of 
Lord  Macaulay,  '^Competition  is  to  trade,  what  salt  is  to  the  Earth,  the 
grand  preserving  Element."  I  have  not  verified  the  quotation,  but  as  it 
stands  it  is  a  double  blunder  tripled  with  impiety.  Salt  is  not  a  preserving 
element  to  this  earth — but  to  flesh  ;  neither  is  it  to  living  flesh,  but  to 
dead ;  and  the  words  of  Christ,  of  which  the  reader's  memory  is  confounded 
by  this  false  echo  of  them,  were  used  of  the  salt  which  gave  savour  to 
sacrifice,  not  of  that  which  delayed  corruption :  the  "  have  salt  in  your- 
selves and  have  peace  one  with  another"*  being  the  exact  forbidding  of 
Lord  Macaulay's  Salt  of  Trade. 

122.  Again  in  1884,  I  came  round  from  London  by  Hereford,  rather 

^  [See  Pickwick,  eh.  xiii.] 

2  [For  Ruskin's  visit  in  June  1883,  see  above,  p.  xlvii. ;  the  diary  shows  that 
he  was  at  Hereford,  March  15-17,  1884.] 

'  [The  following  extract  from  a  private  letter  refers  to  this  visit  to  Worcester  :— 
'^'If  strength  is  spared  me  for  my  duty  in  Oxford,  it  is  as  much  as  I 
am  allowed  now  to  hope ;  and  I  was  put  in  such  a  passion  last  month  by 
the  late  openings  and  early  closings  and  general  deadliness  at  Worcester 
that  I  dare  not  venture  on  any  more  English  cathedral  work  for  some 
time  to  come.     I  sometimes  wish  they  were  all  in  rums  rather  than  m 
their  chill  of  uselessness." 
This  extract  was  printed  in  the  Westminster  Gazette,  February  22,  1900.  J 
*  [Mark  ix.  50.] 


512        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


to  see  the  Wye  once  more  than  for  any  knowledge  or  pleasure  I  could 
get  out  of  the  modern  model  of  the  once  noble  Norman  church,^  yet  I 
found  much  that  was  yet  precious  in  the  interior,  of  which  the  impres^ 
sion  was  singularly  complicated  by  finding  even  on  the  Sunday  the  west 
end  fenced — as  at  Worcester,  from  all  approach,  by  locked  iron  gates, 
and  faced  by  a  new  timber  house,  built  in  Gothic  form  indeed,  but  only 
as  an  advertisement,  and  proclaiming  itself  in  golden  letters  as  the  abode 
of  a  "  Civil  and  Military  Tailor  from  Sackville  Street,  Piccadilly,  and  pro. 
fessional  Breeches  Maker" — who  also  supplies,  I  don't  myself  see  the 
connection  of  the  business,     Ladies'  walking  habits  and  jackets." 

123.  I  need  not  tell  you  that,  in  the  treatment  of  my  immediate 
subject,  the  Pleasures  of  Truth,  I  have  no  intention  of  including  the 
devices  of  the  arts  of  this  form  of  Advertising  Protestantism.  It  is,  on 
the  contrary,  with  the  purpose  of  vindicating  the  real  Evangelical  religion 
from  the  disgrace  into  which  modern  commerce  and  luxury  have  brought 
it,  that  I  invite  you  to-day  to  consider  with  me  in  what  measure  the 
praise  of  it  is  just,  which  the  four  English  Historians  who  justly  claim 
your  most  respectful  and  trustful  attention  agree  to  bestow  upon  it  with 
all  their  hearts. 

124.  Of  these  four,  Scott,  Carlyle,  Froude,  and  Helps,^  the  first  indeed 
might  be  thought  by  some  of  you  to  be  only  half-hearted  in  his  Protestant 
faith.  But  through  all  the  dramatic  vivacity  with  which  he  has  seen  and 
rendered  the  failings  or  national  peculiarities  of  the  Scottish  Presbyterians, 
his  conviction  of  their  Tightness  and  essential  virtue  will  be  found  deep 
and  unshaken ;  he  differs  from  Carlyle  only  in  his  imaginative  enjoyment 
of  the  outer  paraphernalia  of  Catholicism ;  of  its  spirit  he  is  intolerant, 
and  of  its  virtues  incredulous,^  while  Carlyle  is  always,  to  both,  far-sightedly, 
and  reverently,  just. 

It  is,  therefore,  only  with  his  opinion  on  the  general  meaning  of  the 
Reformation  that  I  shall  concern  myself,  in  this  lecture,  recommending  to 
you,  at  the  same  time,  the  most  careful  reading  both  of  Froude  and 
Helps  in  order  to  enable  you  to  form  right  estimate  of  particular  facts, 
beginning  with  Froude's  discourse  at  St.  Andrews'^  for  the  best  expression 
of  what  he  himself  sees,  understands,  or  means  by  Protestantism. 

125.  For  my  purposes  to-day  it  will  be  enough  that  I  read  to  you,  as 
a  sum  of  the  united  feeling  of  these  three  men,  Carlyle's  statement  of  the 
meaning  of  the  Reformation  to  Europe,  given  in  the  eighth  chapter  of 
Friedrich :  ^ — 

"  The  Reformation  was  the  great  Event  of  that  Sixteenth  Century ;  according  as 
a  man  did  something  in  that,  or  did  nothing  and  obstructed  doing,  has  he  much 
claim  to  memory,  or  no  claim,  in  this  age  of  ours.  The  more  it  becomes  apparent 
that  the  Reformation  was  the  Event  then  transacting  itself,  was  the  thing  that 

^  [Commenced  by  Bishop  Losing  (1079-1095) ;  with  subsequent  additions  in  the 
Early  English  and  Decorated  styles  ;  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  injured 
by  Wyatt ;  dealt  with  in  the  nineteenth  by  Cottingham  and  Sir  Gilbert  Scott.] 

2  [See  above,  §  113  and  n.  (p.  506);  on  Carlvle,  see  further,  below,  p.  514; 
and  on  Froude,  p.  516.    See  also  Fors  Clavigera^  Letter  88  (Vol.  XXIX.  pp.  387  seq.).] 

^  [Compare  above,  p.  228  and  n.] 

*   On     Calvinism "  ;  in  Short  Studies  upon  Great  Subjects.'] 
'  [Eighth  chapter  of  Book  iii.] 


V.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  TRUTH 


Germany  and  Europe  either  did  or  refused  to  do,  the  more  does  the  historical 
significance  of  men  attach  itself  to  the  phases  of  that  transaction.  Accordingly  we 
notice  henceforth  that  the  memorable  points  of  Brandenburg  History,  what  of  it 
sticks  naturally  to  the  memory  of  a  reader  or  student,  connect  themselves  of  their 
own  accord,  almost  all  with  the  History  of  the  Reformation,  That  has  proved  to 
be  the  Law  of  Nature  in  regard  to  them,  softly  establishing  itself;  and  it  is  ours 
to  follow  that  law. 

"Brandenburg,  not  at  first  unanimously,  by  no  means  too  inconsiderately,  but 
with  overwhelming  unanimity  when  the  matter  became  clear,  was  lucky  enough 
to  adopt  the  Reformation  ; — and  stands  by  it  ever  since  in  its  ever-widening  scope, 
amid  such  difiiculties  as  there  might  be.  Brandenburg  had  felt  somehow,  that  it 
could  do  no  other.  And  ever  onwards  through  the  times  even  of  our  little  Fritz 
and  farther,  if  we  will  understand  the  word  '  Reformation,'  Brandenburg  so  feels ; 
being,  at  this  day,  to  an  honourable  degree,  incapable  of  believing  incredibilities' 
of  adopting  solemn  shams,  or  pretending  to  live  on  spiritual  moonshine.  Which 
has  been  of  uncountable  advantage  to  Brandenburg  :— how  could  it  fail  ?  This  was 
what  we  must  call  obeying  the  audible  voice  of  Heaven.  To  which  same  '  voice,' 
at  that  time,  all  that  did  not  give  ear, — what  has  become  of  them  since ;  have  they 
not  signally  had  the  penalties  to  pay ! 

^  Penalties ' :  quarrel  not  with  the  old  phraseology,  good  reader  ;  attend  rather 
to  the  thing  it  means.  The  word  was  heard  of  old,  with  a  right  solemn  meaning 
attached  to  it,  from  theological  pulpits  and  such  places  ;  and  may  still  be  heard 
there  with  a  half  meaning,  or  with  no  meaning,  though  it  has  rather  become 
obsolete  to  modern  ears.  But  the  thing  should  not  have  fallen  obsolete ;  the  thing 
is  a  grand  and  solemn  truth,  expressive  of  a  silent  Law  of  Heaven,  which  continues 
forever  valid.  The  most  untheological  of  men  may  still  assert  the  thing;  and 
invite  all  men  to  notice  it,  as  a  silent  monition  and  prophecy  in  this  Universe  ;  to 
take  it,  with  more  of  awe  than  they  are  wont,  as  a  correct  reading  of  the  Will  of 
the  Eternal  in  respect  of  such  matters  ;  and,  in  their  modern  sphere,  to  bear  the 
same  well  in  mind.  For  it  is  perfectly  certain,  and  may  be  seen  with  eyes  in  any 
quarter  of  Europe  at  this  day. 

Protestant  or  not  Protestant  ?  The  question  meant  everywhere  :  ^  Is  there 
an5rthing  of  nobleness  in  you,  O  Nation,  or  is  there  nothing.^  Are  there,  in  this 
Nation,  enough  of  heroic  men  to  venture  forward,  and  to  battle  for  God's  Truth 
versus  the  Devil's  Falsehood,  at  the  peril  of  life  and  more.''  Men  who  prefer  death, 
and  all  else,  to  living  under  Falsehood, — who,  once  for  all,  will  not  live  under 
Falsehood ;  but  having  drawn  the  sword  against  it  (the  time  being  come  for  tliat 
rare  and  important  step),  throw  away  the  scabbard,  and  can  say,  in  pious  clearness, 
with  their  whole  soul :  '  Come  on,  then  !  Life  under  Falsehood  is  not  good  for 
me ;  and  we  will  try  it  out  now.    Let  it  be  to  the  death  between  us,  then  ! ' 

"Once  risen  into  this  divine  white-heat  of  temper,  were  it  only  for  a  season 
and  not  again,  the  Nation  is  thenceforth  considerable  through  all  its  remaining 
history.  What  immensities  of  dross  and  crypto-poisonous  matter  will  it  not  burn 
out  of  itself  in  that  high  temperature,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  !  W^itness 
Cromwell  and  his  Puritans,— making  England  habitable  even  under  the  Charles- 
Second  terms  for  a  couple  of  centuries  more.  Nations  are  benefited,  I  believe,  for 
ages,  by  being  thrown  once  into  divine  white-heat  in  this  matter.  And  no  Nation 
that  has  not  had  such  divine  paroxysms  at  any  time  is  apt  to  come  to  much. 

"That  was  now,  in  this  epoch,  the  English  of  ^adopting  Protestantism';  and 
we  need  not  wonder  at  the  results  which  it  has  had,  and  which  the  want  of  it  has 
had.  For  the  want  of  it  is  literally  the  want  of  loyalty  to  the  Maker  of  this 
Universe.  He  who  wants  that,  what  else  has  he,  or  can  he  have  ?  If  you  do  not, 
you  Man  or  you  Nation,  love  the  truth  enough,  but  try  to  make  a  chapman-bargain 
with  truth,  instead  of  giving  yourself  wholly  soul  and  body  and  life  to  her,  Truth 
will  not  live  with  you.  Truth  will  depart  from  you  ;  and  only  logic,  '  Wit '  (for 
example,  'London  Wit'),  Sophistry,  Virtu,  the  Esthetic  Arts,  and  perhaps,  (for 
a  short  while)  Book-keeping  by  Double  Entry,  will  abide  with  you.  You  will 
follow  falsity,  and  think  it  truth,  you  unfortunate  man  or  nation.    You  will  right 

XXXIII.  2  K 


514         THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


surely,  you  for  one,  stumble  to  the  Devil ;  and  are  every  day  and  hour,  little  as 
you  imagine  it,  making  progress  thither. 

"  Austria,  Spain,  Italy,  France,  Poland, — the  offer  of  the  Reformation  was  made 
everywhere ;  and  it  is  curious  to  see  what  has  become  of  the  nations  that  would 
not  hear  it.  In  all  countries  were  some  that  accepted  ;  but  in  many  there  were 
not  enough,  and  the  rest,  slowly  or  swiftly,  with  fatal  difficult  industry,  contrived 
to  burn  them  out.  Austria  was  once  full  of  Protestants,  but  the  hide-bound 
Flemish-Spanish  Kaiser-element  presiding  over  it,  obstinately,  for  two  centuries, 
kept  saying,  '  No  ;  we,  with  our  dull  obstinate  Cimburgis  underlip  and  lazy  eyes, 
with  our  ponderous  Austrian  depth  of  Habituality  and  indolence  of  Intellect,  we 
prefer  steady  Darkness  to  uncertain  new  Light ! " — and  all  men  may  see  where 
Austria  now  is.  Spain  still  more  ;  poor  Spain,  going  about,  at  this  time,  making 
its  ' pronunciamentos' ;  all  the  factious  attorneys  in  its  little  towns  assembling  to 
pronounce  virtually  this,  '  The  Old  is  a  lie,  then  ; — good  Heavens,  after  we  so  long 
tried  hard,  harder  than  any  nation,  to  think  it  a  truth  ! — and  if  it  be  not  Rights 
of  Man,  Red  Republic  and  Progress  of  the  Species,  we  know  not  what  now  to 
believe  or  to  do  ;  and  are  as  a  people  stumbling  on  steep  places,  in  the  darkness 
of  midnight  !' — They  refused  Truth  when  she  came  ;  and  now  Truth  knows  nothing 
of  them.  All  stars,  and  heavenly  lights,  have  become  veiled  to  such  men  ;  they 
must  now  follow  terrestrial  ignes  fatui,  and  think  them  stars.  That  is  the  doom 
passed  upon  them. 

Italy  too  had  its  Protestants;  but  Italy  killed  them;  managed  to  extinguish 
Protestantism.  Italy  put  up  silently  with  Practical  Lies  of  all  kinds  ;  and,  shrug- 
ging its  shoulders,  preferred  going  into  Dilettantism  and  the  Fine  Arts.  The 
Italians,  instead  of  the  sacred  service  of  Fact  and  Performance,  did  Music,  Painting, 
and  the  like: — till  even  that  has  become  impossible  for  them;  and  no  noble  Nation, 
sunk  from  virtue  to  virtu,  ever  offered  such  a  spectacle  before.  He  that  will  prefer 
Dilettantism  in  this  world  for  his  outfit,  shall  have  it ;  but  all  the  gods  will  depart 
from  him  ;  and  manful  veracity,  earnestness  of  purpose,  devout  depth  of  soul,  shall 
no  more  be  his.  He  can  if  he  like  make  himself  a  soprano,  and  sing  for  hire;— 
and  probably  that  is  the  real  goal  for  him. 

^^But  the  sharpest-cut  example  is  France;  to  which  we  constantly  return  for 
illustration.  France,  with  its  keen  intellect,  saw  the  truth  and  saw  the  falsity,  in 
those  Protestant  times ;  and,  with  its  ardour  of  generous  impulse,  was  prone  enough 
to  adopt  the  former.  France  was  within  a  hair's-breadth  of  becoming  actually 
Protestant.  But  France  saw  good  to  massacre  Protestantism,  and  end  it  in  the 
night  of  St.  Bartholomew  1572.  The  celestial  Apparitor  of  Heaven's  Chancery, 
so  we  may  speak,  the  Genius  of  Fact  and  V'eracity,  had  left  his  VV^rit  of  Summons ; 
Writ  was  read  ; — and  replied  to  in  this  manner.  The  Genius  of  Fact  and  Veracity 
accordingly  withdrew; — was  staved  off,  got  kept  away,  for  two  hundred  years.. 
But  the  VV^rit  of  Summons  had  been  served  ;  Heaven's  Messenger  could  not  stay 
away  forever.  No  ;  he  returned  duly ;  with  accounts  run  up,  on  compound  interest, 
to  the  actual  hour,  in  1792; — and  then,  at  last,  there  had  to  be  a  'Protestantism'  ; 
and  we  know  of  what  kind  that  was  ! 

Nations  did  not  so  understand  it,  nor  did  Brandenburg  more  than  the  others; 
but  the  question  of  questions  for  them  at  that  time,  decisive  of  their  history  for 
half  a  thousand  years  to  come,  was.  Will  you  obey  the  heavenly  voice,  (►r  will 
you  not }" 

Now  although  I  read  you  this  as  an  ex  parte  statement,  and  am  about 
to  dispute,  and,  as  I  believe,  correct  it  in  many  particulars,  yet  I  pray 
you  to  observe  that  in  its  very  partiality  it  deserves  your  respect  as  the 
utterance  of  a  man  throwing  his  whole  heart  forth  in  one  direction,  the 
necessary  one  in  his  eyes,  and  blind,  therefore,  to  the  bearings  of  other 
things  on  this  side  or  that, — you  are  to  distinguish  this  kind  of  narrow- 
ness with  the  most  reverent  sympathy  from  the  cold  injustice  of  common 


V.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  TRUTH  515 

partizanship,  which  deUberately,  cunningly,  and  by  daily  habit,  picks  up 
whatever  it  can  find  to  prop  its  theory,  or  push  its  cause,  and  deUberately 
conceals  or  evades  whatever  is  at  variance  with  its  conceptions,  or  adverse 
to  its  wishes. 

126.  Carlyle's  life  was  spent  in  endeavouring  to  make  the  British  Nation 
perceive  the  falsehood  of  present  ways,  and  wherever  in  former  history  he 
sees  the  shadow,  or  the  beginning  of  falsehood,  he  fastens  upon  that  as  if 
it  were  the  only— or  the  all-embracing— evil  of  the  time.  Wherever  also 
he  sees  the  effort  to  be  true,  for  that  effort's  sake  he  forgives  all  rudeness 
of  mind  and  lowness  of  aim.  And  in  this  sense  and  limitation,  what  he 
tells  you  of  the  Reforming  Church  and  the  States  defending  it,  is  to  be 
read  with  entire  consent.  The  Reformation  does  mean,  in  one  function  of 
it,  the  endeavour  of  persons  left  illiterate  by  the  neglect  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  or  wilfully  deceived  for  the  sake  of  its  worldly  interests,  to  recover 
for  themselves  the  possession  and  pure  meaning  of  the  Bible,  and  prove 
for  themselves  the  origin  and  sweetness  of  personal  religion  as  distinct 
from  a  torpid  faith  in  vicarious  offering,  or  prayer. 

127.  In  this  sense  alone  I  am  about  to  speak  of  the  Reformation  in 
the  present  lecture ;  as  its  spirit  M^as  represented  by  Friedrich's  single 
sentence  in  his  first  proclamation  on  the  subject  of  religion in  this 
country  every  man  must  be  served  in  his  own  fashion."  i  But  that  you 
may  first  recognize  how  deeply,  even  in  his  hottest  sympathy  with  the 
Reformation,  Carlyle  felt  what  poor  results  it  had  at  last  achieved,  and 
what  nobler  things  it  had  lost  sight  of,  I  read  you  farther  one  of  those 
notable  passages  in  Friedrich  which,  with  unadvised  modesty,  its  author 
gave  in  parenthetic  small  print, — as  if  the  hasty  reader  might  skip  them 
at  pleasure, — while  he  allowed  his  volumes  to  be  swollen  by  the  full  printed 
text  of  any  small  gossip  or  genealogies  concerning  Friedrich's  family.  The 
piece  I  want  you  not  thus  to  lose  concerns  the  one  hope  of  Friedrich  to 
gather  round  him  the  Illuminative  souls  of  the  World — to  be  "a  new 
Charlemagne,  even  the  smallest  new  Charlemagne  of  spiritual  type,  with 
his  Paladins  round  him,  how  glorious,  how  salutary  in  the  dim  generations 
now  going!"  "The  Epoch,"  Carlyle  goes  on,  "though  Friedrich  took  it 
kindly  and  never  complained,  was  ungenial  to  such  a  man  "  :  ^ — 

.  .  .  Pilgriming  along  on  such  nourishment,  the  best  human  soul  fails  to 
become  very  ruddy  ! — Tidings  about  Heaven  are  fallen  so  uncertain,  but  the  Earth 
and  her  ^ojs  are  still  interesting :  '  Take  to  the  Earth  and  her  joys  ;— let  your 
soul  go  out,  since  it  must;  let  vour  five  senses  and  their  appetites  be  well  alive.' 
That  is  a  dreadful  '  Sham-Christian  Dispensation '  to  be  born  under !  You  M'ouder 
at  the  want  of  heroism  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  Wonder  rather  at  the  degree 
of  heroism  it  had  ;  wonder  how  many  souls  there  still  are  to  be  met  with  in  it  of 
some  effective  capability,  though  dieting  in  that  way,— nothing  else  to  be  had  in 
the  shops  about.  Carterets,  Belleisles,  Friedrichs,  Voltaires ;  Chathams,  Franklins, 
Choiseuls :  there  is  an  effective  stroke  of  work,  a  fine  fire  of  heroic  pride,  in  this 
man  and  the  other;  not  yet  extinguished  by  spiritual  famine  or  slow-poison;  ?o 
robust  is  Nature  the  mighty  Mother ! 

1  [Ruskin  quotes  from  memory.  The  words  were  "denn  hier  muss  ein  jeder 
nach  seiner  fa9on  sehg  werden,"  which  Carlyle  translates :  "  In  this  country  every 
man  must  get  to  Heaven  in  his  own  way"  (Book  xi.  ch.  i.).] 

2  [Book  xi.  ch.  i.] 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


^'But  in  general^  that  sad  Gospel^  ^ Souls  extinct.  Stomachs  well  alive!'  is  the 
credible  cue,  not  articulately  preached,  but  practically  believed  by  the  abject  genera- 
tions, and  acted  on  as  it  never  was  before.  What  immense  sensualities  there  were, 
is  known  ;  and  also  (as  some  small  offset,  though  that  has  not  yet  begun  in  1740) 
what  immense  quantities  of  Physical  Labour  and  contrivance  were  got  out  of  man- 
kind, in  that  Epoch  and  down  to  this  day.  As  if,  having  lost  its  Heaven,  it  had 
struck  desperately  down  into  the  Earth  ;  as  if  it  were  a  heaver-kind,  and  not  a 
mankind  any  more.  We  had  once  a  Barbarossa ;  and  a  world  all  grandly  true. 
But  from  that  to  Karl  VI.,  and  his  Holy  Romish  Reich  in  such  a  state  of 
'Holiness' — !"    I  here  cut  short  my  abstruse  Friend. 

12S.  I  will  venture  to  answer  the  questions  put  in  this  passage  [namely, 
the  one  first  quoted  from  Carlyle]  with  a  wider  sympathy  than  Carlyle 
had  for  the  aesthetic  arts,  and  the  respect  of  a  Merchant's  son  for  Book- 
keeping by  Double  Entry,  so  it  be  not  double-minded  entry. 

First  for  England.  That  she  was  made  habitable  by  Cromwell  and  his 
Puritans  is  so  far  from  the  fact,  that  she  has  ever  since  been  boiling  over 
in  a  more  and  more  furious  tide  of  Emigration. 

Secondly,  for  Austria, — ''AH  men  may  see  where  Austria  now  is."  They 
may ;  she  is  where  the  Styrian  Alps  are ;  that  is  to  say,  extremely  fast 
where  she  was  before,  with  such  men  and  women  among  her  peasantry  as 
the  world  cannot  match,  in  their  kind. 

Thirdly,  for  Spain.  All  that  I  actually  know  of  her  is  that  she  produces 
as  good  sack  as  in  FalstafT s  days,  that  for  courtesy  and  hospitality  there 
is  not  her  like  among  more  prosperous  nations,  and  that  a  Spanish  town 
is  better  worth  seeing  than  an  English  one. 

Fourthly,  for  Italy.  She  went  into  Dilettantism,  precisely  in  the  degree 
that  she  became  Protestant — while  she  was  Catholic,  having  done  the  best 
real  work  in  Building,  Painting,  and  Carving  extant  in  the  world ;  and 

Fifthly,  for  France, — "  We  know  of  what  kind  her  Protestantism  was," 
when  it  came  at  last.  Is  it  so  clear,  then,  that  it  was  Heaven's  apparition 
when  it  came  at  first  ? 

129.  That  in  the  disjiuce  between  men  of  the  world  professing  con- 
trary views  of  religion,  with  whicli  their  worldly  interests  are  connected, 
either  side  will  commit  crimes  of  which  their  adversaries  will  rejoice  to 
tell  the  story,  is  manifest,  too  fatally  and  foolishly,  in  quarrel  of  sects  and 
every  ecclesiastical  history,  but  the  wonderful  thing  is  that,  professing  the 
strictest  love  of  truth,  Protestant  history  is  always  the  falsest.  I  will  take, 
for  examination,  one  of  the  most  striking  statements  of  the  faithfullest 
of  Protestant  Historians — wholly  candid  in  heart, — Froude, — made  in  his 
essay  on  "  The  Condition  and  Prospects  of  Protestantism,"  ^  respecting  the 
Catholic  deed  over  which  Protestantism  chiefly  triumphs,  the  Massacre  of 
St.  Bartholomew  : — 

"The  so-called  'horrors  of  the  French  Revolution'  were  a  mere  bagatelle,  a 
mere  summer  shower,  by  the  side  of  the  atrocities  committed  in  the  name  of  religion, 
and  with  the  sanction  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

"Tlie  Jacobin  Convention  of  1713'3-179-A  may  serve  as  a  measure  to  show  how 
mild  are  the  most  ferocious  of  mere  human  beings  when  compared  to  an  exas- 
perated priesthood.    By  the  September  massacre,  by  the  guillotine,  by  the  fusillade 

^  [The  passage  here  quoted  will  be  found  in  vol.  ii.  pp.  174-175  of  Short  Studies 
(ed.  1891).] 


I  V.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  TRUTH  517 

!  at  Lyons,  and  by  the  drownings  on  the  Loire,  five  thousand  men  and  women  at  the 
utmost  suffered  a  comparatively  easy  death.  Multiply  the  five  thousand  by  ten, 
and  you  do  not  reach  the  number  of  those  who  were  murdered  in  France  alone 
in  the  two  months  of  August  and  September,  1572.  Fifty  thousand  Flemings  and 
Germans  are  said  to  have  been  hanged,  burnt,  or  buried  alive  under  Charles  the 

I  Fifth.  Add  to  this  the  long  agony  of  the  Netherlands  in  the  revolt  from  Philip, 
the  Thirty  Years'  War  in  Germany,  the  ever-recurring  massacres  of  the  Huguenots, 
and  remember  that  the  Catholic  religion  alone  was  at  the  bottom  of  all  these 
horrors,  that  the  crusades  against  the  Huguenots  especially,  were  solemnly  sanctioned 

I    by  successive  popes,  and  that  no  word  of  censure  ever  issued  from  the  Vatican 

1    except  in  the  brief  intervals  when  statesmen  and  soldiers  grew  weary  of  bloodshed, 

I   and  looked  for  means  to  admit  the  heretics  to  grace." 

130.  Now,  in  this  passage,  I  pray  the  reader  to  observe,  first,  the 
sentence,  The  Catholic  religion  alone  was  at  the  bottom  of  all  these 
horrors."  Thinking  but  for  an  instant,  you  see  the  sentence  is  a  gross 
falsehood,  that  there  were  many  other  causes,  alike  for  the  contests  and 
crimes,  than  even  corrupt  Catholicism.    Thinking  rightly  for  a  due  suc- 

I  cession  of  instants,  you  will  perceive  that  Catholicism  is  answerable  for 
none  of  these  things,  but  only  the  brutal  habits  of  life  and  fury  of  temper 
generated  by  war  for  three  hundred  years  back  of  continually  increasing 
ferocity,  and  luxury  of  three  hundred  years  back  of  continually  increasing 
phrenzy.  But  the  Catholic  religion  is  no  more  answerable  for  the  death 
of  Coligny  than  of  Joan  of  Arc,  and  is  no  more  to  be  judged  in  the 
person  of  her  corrupt  kings  and  priests  than  the  Law  of  Moses  in  Herod 
and  Caiaphas. 

But  secondly,  the  "  so-called "  horrors  of  the  French  Revolution  are 
limited  by  the  Protestant  Historian  to  the  September  massacre — the 
guillotine — the  Lyons  Fusillade,  and  the  drownings  in  the  Loire !  The 
French  Revolution  is  alike  answerable  to  France  alone  for  all  the  Dead 
I  of  France  in  the  Napoleonic  wars — from  Montenotte  to  Sedan — for  all  the 
I  dead  of  other  nations  in  contest  with  herself  first — and  since  among  them- 
selves. And  finally,  for  whatever  degradation  and  domestic  misery  have 
fallen  upon  total  Europe,  in  the  Atheism  of  its  untaught  generations. 

[The  following  pages  contain  further  passages  from  the  MS.] 

131.  Before  entering  upon  my  subject  of  to-day,  I  must  recapitulate  the 
!    broken  statements,  and  make  clear  the  connected  intention,  of  my  last 

two  lectures.  I  gave  you  the  period  between  the  Birth  of  Alfred  and 
I  Death  of  Coeur  de  Lion  as  that  in  which  the  Christian  Religion,  both  in 
I  England  and  elsewhere,  was  vigorously  and  instantly  translated  into  deed 
I  for  the  sake  of  the  Pleasure  of  Doing  in  the  first  place— the  Life  of  Man 
j  being  then  unendurable  to  him  in  idleness,  but  also,  because  the  entire 
!  meaning  of  Christianity  to  its  then  disciples  was  one  of  eager  call  to 
!    Deed.    "Fight  the  good  fight."       Work  while  ye  have  the  light."  '^Tave 

not  I  agreed  with  the  Labourers  for  a  penny  a  day }  " 

Be  it  building  burgs,  be  it  sailing  ships,  be  it  weaving  broadcloth,  be 

it  slaying  Saracens,  every  belief  and  strength  of  Manhood  went  in  those 

1  [1  Timothy  vi.  12;  John  xii.  35  ("Walk  while  .  .  ."),  and  ix.  4  ("I  must 
work  while  it  is  day");  Matthew  xx.  13.] 


518 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


blessed  days  straight  into  deed,  nor,  ever  since  earth  bore  men,  were 
better  strokes  struck,  better  .stones  laid,  nobler  obedience  rendered,  nobler 
order  enforced.  The  King,  the  Monk,  the  Knight,  the  Craftsman,  all  are 
doing,  all  being,  the  best  that  Manhood  may. 

As  far  as  I  know,  and  as  far  as  I  can  judge,  or  feel,  and  assuredly,  as 
far  as  is  possible  for  any  of  you,  my  younger  hearers,  at  present  to  judge 
also,  the  meeting  of  Hugo  of  Lincoln  with  Cceur  de  Lion  before  the  altar 
of  Rouen,  and  the  Bishop's  "  Kiss  me,  my  Lord  King,"  are  the  grandest 
scene  and  saying,  understood  in  their  full  significance,  yet  recorded  in 
human  history. ^ 

132.  With  the  death  of  Coeur  de  Lion  for  England,  with  the  death  of 
Pietro  de  Rossi  for  Italy,^  a  new  period  begins,  of  gainful  commerce,  and 
luxurious  civilization.  The  Pleasures  of  England  and  of  Europe  also  begin 
to  be  no  more  in  doing  for  the  doing's  sake,  but,  more  or  less,  for  pay- 
ment, money  gain ;  her  religion,  also,  no  more  in  direct  service  to  God, 
but  in  service  for  the  sake  of  what  can  be  got  from  Him,  or  may  be  for- 
given by  Him.  Churches  are  built  not  for  His  honour,  but  for  the  town's, 
monasteries  founded,  not  for  the  peace  of  the  Monks,  but  for  that  of 
the  Founder's  soul.  Avarice  and  luxury  mine  and  corrupt,  stealthily  and 
steadily,  the  character  and  thought  of  nations ;  while  yet  the  vigour  of 
the  faith  remains  unshaken,  but  not  its  honesty.  Imagination  is  gradu- 
ally separated  from  Deed — the  deed  is  feebler  or  even  entirely  selfish, — 
the  Imagination  feebler,  or  even  entirely  foolish,  but  in  association  with 
Romance,  rampant,  fantastic,  exuberant,  insolent,  the  changes  in  its  tone 
perfectly  traceable  and  measurable  within  decade  periods  of  3"ears,  a  little 
later  in  some  countries  than  in  others,  but  universally  from  useful  and 
noble  simplicity  into  wanton  extravagance.  Of  course,  the  greatest  men 
in  all  countries  resist  alike  the  power  of  vanity  and  avarice,  they  use  all 
the  opportunity  of  their  time,  and  defy  its  disease.  Shakespeare  dies  a 
stroller,  Botticelli  a  pauper,^  both  of  them  masters  of  Fantasy,  both  of 
them  servants  of  Truth,  and  expressing  alike  their  knowledge  and  their 
vision  with  the  skill  inherited  through  a  thousand  years  of  practice  and 
invention.  But  the  great  ones  are  now  alone,  the  multitude  is  lost  in 
tyranny  and  luxury  or  misery,  and  the  day  has  come — of  Protestantism 
assuredly,  of  Reformation,  if  it  may  be,  and  of  Revolution,  if  not. 

133.  Only,  once  for  all,  don't  confuse — as  modern  historians  and  poli- 
ticians are  perpetually  doing — Reformation  with  Revolution.  They  are  each 
other's  exact  negatives.  Reformation — is  of  a  broken  Square  into  a  steady 
one ;  Revolution — the  blasting  of  a  tower  on  a  Rock  into  its  own  ditch 
head  downmost.  I  will  wipe  Jerusalem  as  a  man  wipeth  a  dish — 
wiping  it,  and  turning  it  upside  down."  ^ 

134.  And  once  for  all,  again,  don't — as  modern  sects  and  parties  always 
do — confuse  inadvertently, —  much  more,  wilfully, — the  corruptions  either  of 
Papacy,  Protestantism,  or  Reformation,  with  the  things  themselves.  Don't 

1  [An  account  of  the  scene  may  be  read  in  Froude's  essay  on  ^^A  Bishop  of 
the  Twelfth  Century,"  in  Short  Studies,  vol.  ii.  pp.  92-94.  For  another  reference  to 
the  scene,  see  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  43,  §  11  (Vol.  XXVIII.  p.  118).] 

2  [In  1337 :  see  Val  d'Arno,  §  274  (Vol.  XXIII.  p.  160).] 
^  [See  Ariadne  Florentina,  §  197  (Vol.  XXII.  p.  434).] 

*  [2  Kings  xxi.  13  :  quoted,  in  the  same  connexion,  in  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  387-] 


V.  THE  PLEASURES  OF  TRUTH 


519 


confuse  Papal  Authority  with  Papal  Avarice,  Protestant  independence  with 
Protestant  pride,  or  Reformation  of  Church  with  the  use  of  its  aisles  for 
stables,!  its  altars  for  horse-blocks.  I  have  seen  with  my  own  eyes,  an 
Austrian  Catholic  Hussar  tether  his  horse  to  a  pillar  of  the  cloister  of  the 
Duomo  of  Verona,  and  a  Veronese  Catholic  washerwoman  at  the  same 
moment  (day  at  least,  to  be  accurate)  tie  her  clothes-line  to  the  nose 
of  the  griffin  who  sustains  the  northern  pillar  of  its  porch.2  I  watched 
presently  a  priest  come  out  of  the  cloister,  and  under  the  line,  apathetic 
apparently  to  both  phenomena,  for  which  in  reality  he  was  answerable,  and 
neither  the  hussar  nor  washerwoman.  But  neither  of  them  were  in  any 
sort  Reforming  "  either  him,  or  the  Duomo.  I  am  about  to-day,  therefore, 
to  trace  for  you  with  the  severest  scrutiny  possible  the  beginning  and  the 
growth  to  its  adult  strength  of  Protestantism,  marking  what  real  virtue 
and  life  it  had,  down  to  the  day  when  the  wine  of  the  grafted  clusters 
changed  into  vinegar  mingled  with  gall. 

135.  We  must  begin,  clearly,  with  a  definition  of  what  Protestantism  is 
— afterwards  marking  what  it  becomes  in  its  corruption,  but  in  its  essence 
is  Not.  Protestantism  is  first  the  "cry  of  the  Poor"^ — of  the  oppressed 
against  the  oppressor.  It  is  not  needful  to  say  "of  the  unjustly  oppressed  "  ; 
oppression  means  injustice.  And  Protestantism  in  this  sense  is  an  old  order 
— that  ye  let  the  oppressed  go  free,  and  that  ye  break  away  every  yoke ;  ^ 
the  Lord  of  Protestants  being  He  that  "  portas  Confregit  Averni."  ^ 

On  the  other  hand,  Catholicism,  as  opposed  to  Protestantism,  is  the  Power 
of  the  Keys — the  Claim  of  Righteous  Law  to  reprove,  rebuke,  and  bind : 
"  He  shall  bind  their  kings  with  chains, — their  nobles  with  fetters  of 
iron."^  And  both  the  righteous  appeal  and  righteous  power  are  in  har- 
mony ; — both  become  alike  corrupt  in  being  unrighteous.  It  is  not  the 
Protestantism  of  Paris  that  throws  down  the  Bastille,  nor  the  Catholicism 
of  Canterbury  that  builds  a  gaol  before  St.  Martin's  Church.  The  text 
which  defines  the  Protestant  power  in  exactitude "  is — "  as  free,  and  not 
using  your  liberty  for  a  cloak  of  maliciousness  "  ^ — otherwise,  Wat  Tyler  is 
as  much  a  reformer  as  Wycliffe. 

136.  Protestantism  is,  in  the  second  place,  the  appeal  of  the  Simple 
against  the  Learned — whether  in  that  they  keep  their  learning  to  them- 
selves, or  that  they  are  insolent  in  it— the  poor  being  unable  to  achieve 
anything  so  grand  or  virtuous.  "Thou  wast  altogether  born  in  sin,  and 
dost  thou  teach  xxst"^  And  this  protest  of  the  natural  dignity  of  the 
human  soul,  learned  or  simple,  "  a  man's  a  man  for  a'  that,"  '^^  gains  still 
greater  authority  from  Christ's  "not  many  wise,  not  many  noble  are 
called,"  11  and  His  choice  of  His  own  disciples,— and  its  appeal  is  the  most 

For  instances,  see  Vol.  I.  p.  430,  and  Vol.  X.  p.  306  n.] 
See  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  i.  (Vol.  IX.  p.  439).] 
Job  xxxiv.  28.] 
Isaiah  Iviii.  6.] 
Bee  above,  §  109  (p.  501);] 
'Psalms  cxlix.  8.] 
See  above,  p.  438.] 
1  Peter  ii.  18.] 
John  ix.  34.] 

Burns  :  For  «'  -that  and  a'  that.'] 
See  1  Corinthians  i.  26.] 


520        THE  PLEASURES  OF  ENGLAND 


majestic  on  earth, — and  far  beyond  that  of  Kings,  if  it  be  indeed  the 
appeal  of  humility  against  the  pride  of  learning, — but  not  if  it  be  the 
pride  of  ignorance  against  that  of  learning.^ 

137.  Protestantism  is,  in  the  third  place,  the  appeal  of  Truth  against 
wanton  or  impious  imagination,  essential  truth  of  character  against  the 
Desire  and  Love  of  Lies;  and  truth  of  observation  against  insanity  or 
conjecture  ;  in  Religion  it  is  the  strength  of  simplicity,  which  knows  the 
law  of  duty  and,  by  experience,  the  Help  of  God  in  answer  to  prayer, 
and  asserts  this  personal  knowledge  of  God  against  theology  which  is  only 
tradition,  or  history  which  is  intentionally  fictitious.  But,  since  denial  is 
always  easy,  understanding  always  difficult,  and  experience  only  the  reward 
of  perseverance  (patience  worketh  experience,  and  experience  hope  2),  the 
strength  of  Protestantism  is  only  found  among  laborious  and  unambitious 
peasantry ;  in  all  its  half-educated  and  aggressive  forms  it  merely  means 
the  scorn  of  persons  incapable  of  thought  for  the  things  they  have  never 
thought  of,  and  of  persons  who  will  not  look  for  the  things  they  have  not 
seen.  It  is  the  natural  enmity  of  the  material  to  the  spiritual,  and  of 
the  base  to  the  pure ;  the  law  which  it  arrogantly  fulfils  becomes  its  worst 
corruption ;  and  the  truth  to  which  it  narrowly  consents,  a  totality  of  lie. 

1  [The  MS.  erases:     Lillyvick's  assertion  that  he  doesn't  think  nothiuk  at  all 
of  that  langwidge."    See  Nicholas  Nicklehy,  ch.  xvi.] 
^  [Romans  v.  4.] 


V 

FINAL  LECTURES  AT  OXFORD 

(1884) 

I.  PATIENCE  {November  22) 
II,  BIRDS,  AND  HOW  TO  PAINT  THEM  {November  29) 
III.  LANDSCAPE  {December  6) 


[^Bibliographical  Note. — The  three  lectures  reported  in  this  Appendix  were 
delivered  at  Oxford,  in  November  and  December  1884,  in  lieu  of  Lec- 
tures VI.  and  Vll.  in  the  course  entitled  The  Pleasures  of  England  (see 
above,  p.  41o). 

They  were  the  last  professorial  lectures  delivered  by  Huskin  at  Oxford. 

They  were  reported  (by  E.  T.  Cook)  in  tlie  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of 
November  24,  December      and  December  10. 

The  report  of  the  second  lecture — that  on  Birds" — was  prepared 
with  the  help  of  Iluskin's  MS.  notes  ;  while  that  of  the  third — on  "  Land- 
scape"— was  revised  by  him  before  publication. 

The  reports  were  reprinted  in  E.  T.  Cook's  Studies  in  Raskin,  1890 
(and  again  in  the  second  edition  of  that  book,  1801),  pp.  2G4-204.] 


I 


A  LECTURE  ON  "  PATIENCE 


{Repnnted  from  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette,"  November  2Uh,  1884) 

].  No  better  proof  can  be  given  of  Mr,  Ruskin's  popularity  at  Oxford 
than  the  fact  that  he  played  off  a  practical  joke  on  the  five  hundred 
people  who  crowded  the  Museum  theatre  to  hear  him  on  Saturday  after- 
noon,i  and  yet  aroused  no  perceptible  resentment.  They  had  all  come — 
an  hour  before  the  time,  too,  many  of  them— to  hear  the  sixth  of  his 
appointed  course  of  lectures  on  the  "  Pleasures  of  England " ;  but  he 
straightway  announced  that  this  lecture  would  be  postponed  till  Monday 
week,  and  meanwhile  he  proposed  to  read  them  a  little  essay  on  Patience. 
The  innocent  joke,  it  should  at  once  be  said,  was  not  altogether  of  Mr. 
Ruskin's  own  devising.  The  remaining  lectures  of  the  proper  course  were 
ready,2  but  pressure  had  been  brought  to  bear  upon  him  to  suppress  or 
recast  them.  The  details  of  these  lectures  had  so  far  fluttered  the 
dovecots  of  the  vivisectionists "  that  there  had  even  been  threats  of  the 
intervention  of  a  Board  of  Studies,  and  of  the  incarceration  of  their 
single-handed  antagonist.^  Why  they  were  so  much  afraid  of  his  discuss- 
ing the  Pleasures  of  Sense  he  really  could  not  think.  All  the  beautiful 
things  he  had  showed  them  in  religious  art  appealed  to  the  pleasure  of 
sense.  Every  religious  child  is  happy ;  and  all  religion,  if  it  is  true,  is 
beautiful ;  it  is  only  sham  religion — the  habit,  for  instance,  of  excessive 
mourning  for  the  dead^ — and  vice  that  are  ugly.  When  they  heard  the 
lecture^  they  would  see  that  he  was  only  going  to  point  out  to  them 
some  new  and  innocent  ways  of  enjoying  themselves. 

2.  The  unkind  critics  who  had  caused  all  this  confusion  were — so  it 
was  said  in  Oxford— Mr.  Macdonald  and  Dr.  Acland.  Mr.  Ruskin  had 
taken  their  rebuke  meekly ;  but  if  it  was  on  behalf  of  science  that  Dr. 
Acland  was  afraid,  Mr.  Ruskin  clearly  means  to  have  his  revenge.  For 
in  the  meanwhile  he  promised  to  give  a  scientific  lecture;^  and  Mr. 
Ruskin's  scientific  lectures  do  not  greatly  please  the  recognized  professors 
of  science.       I  shall  not  tell  you,'*  Mr.  Ruskin  said,  "  how  long  a  bird's 


November  22.] 

This  statement  is  incorrect:  see  above,  pp.  lii.,  liii.] 
On  this  subject,  see  again  the  Introduction;  above,  p.  Ivi.l 
Compare  A  Joy  for  Ever,  §  70  (Vol.  XVI.  p.  62),  and  Crown  of  Wild  Olive, 
§  14  ^(Vol.  XVm.  p.  395).]  „    1  .  , 

^  [Which,  however,  was  never  printed  ;  nor,  indeed,  written,  so  far  as  Ruskni  s 
MSS.  disclose.] 

«  [The  lecture  on  Birds;  below,  pp.  527-531.] 

'  523 


524         FINAL  LECTURES  AT  OXFORD 


larynx  is,  for  I  don't  know  and  I  don't  care,  but  I  can  tell  you  some- 
thing about  its  singing.  I  can  tell  you  about  its  feathers,  but  not  what 
is  underneath  its  skin.  Why,  I  went  into  your  museum  to  find  an 
Abyssinian  kingfisher  —  the  classical  halcyon — but  there  was  only  one, 
hidden  in  a  dark  corner,  and  that  not  a  good  enough  specimen  to 
draw.  A  very  sad  thing  that,  and  even  sadder  that  they  should  pack 
away  the  skins  of  the  birds  in  drawers  in  '  stinking  camphor.'  In  the 
British  Museum,  however,  you  can  now  for  the  first  time  see  birds  poised, 
and  how  they  fly.  I  told  Dr.  Giinther,^  the  Keeper  of  Zoology  (in  the 
second  chapter  of  Loves  Meinie,  for  example  and  he's  now  telling  you." 
"  Next  Saturday,"  Mr.  Ruskin  added,  "  I  shall  do  a  little  more  '  peacocking ' 
before  you,  and  am  going  to  show  you  some  practical  experiments — with 
the  help  of  the  Balliol  College  cook — of  glaciers  and  glacier  motion."  ^ 
Here,  again,  Mr.  Ruskin  has  an  old  quarrel,  as  every  one  knows,  with  the 
men  of  science. 

3.  The  prospect  of  these  two  dainty  dishes  should  itself  have  made  the 
lesson  of  patience  easier.  As  Mr.  Ruskin  told  the  girls  in  the  Ethics  of 
the  Dust^^  there  was  obviously  no  reason  why  his  audience,  because  they 
were  the  richer  by  the  expectation  of  playing  at  a  new  game — of  having 
two  new  lectures  thrown  in — should  make  themselves  unhappier  than  when 
they  had  nothing  to  look  forward  to  but  the  old  ones.  And  then,  even 
when  the  little  lecture  itself  began,  Mr.  Ruskin  often  stopped  from  his 
reading  to  throw  sugar-plums  to  his  pupils,  Were  there  any  of  them 
courting,  for  instance  }  Then  his  advice  was  to  continue  it  as  long  as  pos- 
sible. Young  people  nowadays  do  not  enjoy  their  courtship  half  enough  ; 
it  really  becomes  nicer  and  nicer  the  longer  it  lasts.  Besides,  you  are 
all  sure  to  find  fault  with  your  wives  when  you  marry  them ;  it  is  only 

^  [Referring  to  the  above  report,  Ruskin  wrote  to  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  (Novem- 
ber 2G,  1884)  as  follows:— 

^^84,  Woodstock  Road, 

'^Oxford,  Noreniher  25th. 

Sir, — Again  thanking  you  for  the  general  care  and  fulness  of  your 
reports,  permit  irie  to  correct  the  sentence  referring  to  the  head  of  the 
Zoological  Department  in  the  British  Museum,  as  it  is  given  in  your 
account  of  niy  lecture  on  J>atiirday.  I  said  that  in  Love's  Meinie  I  had 
for  the  first  time  explained  to  my  Oxford  pupils  how  birds  flew,  and  that 
now  Dr.  Giinther  had  beautifully  shown  the  birds  of  I^ngland  to  us  all, 
in  the  perfect  action  of  flying.  But  I  never  said  1  had  ^  told  Dr.  Giinther' 
anything.  Everything  he  has  so  beautifully  done  has  been  his  own 
bettering  of  what  had  been  begun  by  Mr.  Gould  ;  it  fulfils,  or  super- 
sedes, much  of  what  I  meant  to  attempt  at  Sheffield,  and  leaves  me,  I 
am  thankful  to  say,  more  free  to  my  proper  w^ork  here.  Dr.  Giinther 
continually  tells  me  things,  in  all  sorts  of  kind  ways,  but  I  never  told, 
or  could  have  told,  him  anything. —  I  am.  Sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

'^J.  Ruskin." 

This  letter  was  reprinted  in  Igdrasil,  vol.  ii.  p.  Go,  and  again  (No.  99)  in  the 
privatelv-printed  Ruskiniana,  part  i.,  1890,  pp.  92-93.1 
2  [S4e  Vol.  XXV.] 

^  [This  lecture  was  not  given  ;  but  see  Deucalion  (Vol.  XXVI.  pp.  124  seq.), 
and  compare  Ruskin's  experiments  in  the  kitchen  at  Broadlands  (Vol.  XXIV. 
p.  xxi.  and  Vol.  XXVI.  pp.  177,  232).] 

^  [See  §  35  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  246).] 


I.  "PATIENCE"  525 

during  courtship  that  they  are  entirely  faultless  and  seraphic;  and  why 
not  keep  them  so  as  long  as  you  can?"  Then  there  was  a  little  critical 
squib,  apropos  of  a  citation  of  Keats's  phrase,  human  serpentry."  i  "Read 
as  much  Keats  as  possible,  and  no  Shelley.^  Shelley,  with  due  admiration 
notwithstanding,  for  his  genius,  is  entirely  mischievous,  Keats  entirely 
innocent  and  amusing." 

4.  As  for  the  little  essay  on  Patience  itself,  it  consisted  of  readings,  with 
occasional  self-criticism,  from  the  Cestus  of  Aglaia  and  St.  Mark's  Rest.  The 
first  passage  read  on  Saturday  was  the  analysis  of  Chaucer's  "  Patience  "  : — 

"Dame  Patience  sitting  there  I  fonde, 
With  face  pale,  upon  an  hill  of  sonde."  ^ 

5.  Mr.  Ruskin  apologized  for  the  over-allusive  style  in  which  much  of 
this  analysis  was  written,  for  "  twenty  years  ago  I  was  always  fond  of 
showing  that  I  knew  a  good  deal  and  had  read  a  good  deal."  Elsewhere, 
too,  he  has  explained,  with  reference  to  these  same  chapters  in  the  Art 
Journal,  that  he  has  "three  different  ways  of  writing — one,  with  the  single 
view  of  making  myself  understood,  in  which  I  necessarily  omit  a  good 
deal  of  what  comes  into  my  head  ;  another,  in  which  I  say  what  I  think 
ought  to  be  said,  in  what  I  suppose  to  be  the  best  words  I  can  find  for 
it  (which  is  in  reality  an  affected  style — be  it  good  or  bad) ;  and  my 
third  way  of  writing  is  to  say  all  that  comes  into  my  head  for  my  own 
pleasure,  in  the  first  words  that  come,  retouching  them  afterwards  into 
(approximate)  grammar."  ^  The  Cestus  of  Aglaia  was  written  in  this  third 
style. 

6.  From  the  Patience  of  Chaucer,  Mr.  Ruskin  passed  to  the  Patience 
of  Venice.  The  Patience  who  really  smiles  at  griefs  usually  stands,  or 
walks,  or  even  runs.  She  seldom  sits,  though  she  may  sometimes  have  to 
do  it  for  many  a  day,  poor  thing,  by  monuments,  or  like  Chaucer's,  with 
"face  pale,  upon  an  hill  of  sonde."  The  Patience  of  Venice  is  to  be  found 
on  a  monument — the  statue  of  St.  Theodore,  whose  legend  Mr.  Ruskin 
has  explained  in  Fors  Clavigera  (March  1877),^  and  again  in  the  2nd  chap- 
ter of  St.  Mark's  Rest,  from  which  he  read  on  Saturday. 'J'  In  these  later 
books  of  his,  when  he  talks  in  what  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  calls  his  "  assured 
way  "  about  the  meaning  of  legends,  he  is  only  collating  the  results  of  a 
life's  work,  begun  when  he  was  twenty-four  years  old,  and  when,  by  the 
good  counsel  of  Dean  Liddell,  he  took  to  drawing  religious  art  in  the 


'For  another  reference  to  the  phrase,  see  Vol.  XIX.  p.  84.] 
Xompare  Vol.  I.  pp.  253-254  n.] 

See  Cestus,  §§  30-33  (Vol.  XIX.  pp.  82-86).  Ruskin  had  the  passage  set  up 
in  large  type  for  use  in  this  lecture  ;  the  proof,  among  his  MSS.,  shows  that  he 
made  the  following  revisions :  For  "  by  Eridanus  side  "  he  read  "  beside  the  great 
Lombardic  river";  for  ^^giftless  time,"  "giftless  birthdays";  for  " other  patient 
children,"  other  in  like  manner  patient  children"  ;  for  ''the  yellow  light,  '  Nis 
glory  and  pity"  ;  and  for  "towards  grey  Vise  (who  stood  pale  m  .  .  .),  towards 
Viso  who  stood  in  .  .  ."] 
*  [See  Vol.  XIX.  p.  408.] 

5  [Twelfth  Night,  Act  ii.  sc.  4:  compare  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  247.J 
«  [Letter  75  :  see  Vol.  XXIX.  p.  62.] 
'  [See  Vol.  XXIV.  pp.  225  seq.] 


526         FINAL  LECTURES  AT  OXFORD 


Christ  Church  library.  All  early  religious  art  is  symbolic,  and  the  meaning 
of  the  symbols  is  well  ascertainable.  The  divinity  of  Botticelli,  for  instance, 
is  a  science  at  least  as  well  known  as  that  of  the  Greek  gods,  and  all 
Mr.  Ruskin  does  is  to  give  the  result  of  the  Catholic  knowledge  of  the 
saints — the  interpretation  which  is  universally  recognized  of  their  legends. 
St.  Theodore,  then,  standing,  on  a  crocodile,  as  he  may  be  seen  on  one 
of  the  twin  pillars  of  the  Piazzetta  at  Venice,  represents  the  power  of 
the  Spirit  of  God  in  all  noble  and  useful  animal  life,  conquering  what  is 
venomous,  useless,  or  in  decay.  The  victor}'  of  his  Patience  is  making  the 
earth  liis  pedestal  instead  of  his  adversarj'  ;  he  is  the  power  of  gentle  and 
rational  life,  reigning  over  the  wild  creatures  and  senseless  forces  of  the 
world — the  dragon-enemy  becoming  by  human  mercy  the  faithfuUest  of 
creature  friends  to  man. 

7.  Besides  the  essay  on  Patience,  Mr.  Ruskin  set  to  work  on  Saturday 
on  a  clearing-up  and  putting  right  of  the  "heterogeneous  rubble"  which 
some  of  the  newspapers  had  made  of  his  remarks  on  the  British  Navy  last 
week.  With  a  pretty  compliment  to  his  pupils,  he  asked  them  to  sympa- 
thise with  the  bewilderment  of  the  paltry  British  press  in  its  attempt  to 
reduce  to  the  level  of  British  press  understanding  lectures  which  were  pre- 
pared only  for  their  higher  intelligence.  Mr.  Ruskin  then  repeated  what 
he  had  before  said  about  the  loss  of  the  London,  the  Captaiii,  and  the  Eury- 
dice.^  To  these  disasters  he  now  added  a  much  antecedent  one — that  of  the 
Ro/jal  George,-  which  was  sunk  in  the  harbour,  with  most  of  her  crcM', 
while  the  captain  was  writing  in  the  cabin,  because  a  few  of  them  were 
hunting  rats  half  a  minute  too  long  in  her  hull.  They  had  thus  four 
accurate  illustrations  of  a  kind  of  shipbuilding  and  ship  management  of 
which  there  was  no  parallel  whatever,  either  among  the  Saxons,  Vikings, 
Venetians,  Carthaginians,  Athenians,  or  Normans.  These  catastrophes  be- 
longed exclusively  to  modern  naval  history,  which  had  its  triumphs,  but 
was  darkened  by  many  more  shadows  than  the  features  which  beautified 
it.  As  for  the  remedy,  Mr.  Ruskin  has  explained  long  ago,  in  Fors,  the 
incompatibility  of  seamanship  with  iron.  "You  need  not  think,"  he  said, 
'^that  you  can  ever  have  seamen  in  iron  ships;  it  is  not  in  flesh  and  blood 
to  be  vigilant  when  vigilance  is  so  slightly  necessary ;  the  best  seaman 
born  will  lose  his  qualities  when  he  knows  he  can  steam  against  wind  and 
tide,  and  has  to  handle  ships  so  large  that  the  care  of  them  is  necessarily 
divided  among  many  persons.  If  you  want  sea  captains  indeed,  like  Sir 
Richard  Grenville  or  Lord  Dundonald,  you  must  give  them  small  ships 
and  wooden  ones — nothing  but  oak,  pine,  and  hemp  to  trust  to,  above  or 
below — and  those  trustworthv."  ^ 


218). 

3 


^  [See  above,  p.  o08.] 

2  f^For  other  references  to  this  disaster,  see  Candida  Ca^a,  §  18  (above,  pp.  217- 


Letter  9,  §  10;  Vol.  XXVII.  p.  153.] 


II 


BIRDS,  AND  HOW  TO  PAINT  THEM 

{Reprinted  from  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette,"  December  3rd,  1884) 

8.  "I  HAVE  scarcely  any  heart  to  address  you  to-day,"  Mr.  Ruskin  beo-an 
by  saying  on  Saturday,^  ''so  terrified  ani  I,  and  so  subdued,  by  the 
changes  in  Oxford  which  have  taken  place  even  since  first  I  accepted 
this  Professorship,  and  vi^hich  are  directly  calculated  to  paralyze  all  my 
efforts  to  be  useful  in  it.  I  need  scarcely  tell  any  of  my  pupils  that  my 
own  Art  teaching  has  been  exclusively  founded  on  the  hope  of  getting 
people  to  enjoy  country  life,  and  to  care  for  its  simple  pleasures  and 
modest  employments.  But  I  find  now  that  the  ideal  in  the  minds  of  all 
young  people,  however  amiable  and  well-meaning,  is  to  marry  as  soon  as 
possible,  and  then  to  live  in  the  most  fashionable  part  of  the  largest 
town  they  can  afford  to  compete  with  the  rich  inhabitants  of,  in  the 
largest  house  they  can  strain  their  incomes  to  the  rent  of,  v/ith  the  water 
laid  on  at  the  top,  the  gas  at  the  bottom,  huge  plate-glass  windows,  out 
of  which  they  may  look  uninterruptedly  at  a  brick  wall,  a  drawing-room 
on  the  scale  of  Buckingham  Palace,  with  Birmingham  fittings,  and  patent 
everythings  going  of  thenoselves  everywhere;  with,  for  all  intellectual  aids 
to  felicity,  a  few  bad  prints,  a  few  dirty  and  foolish  books,  and  a  quantity 
of  photographs  of  the  people  they  know,  or  of  any  passing  celebrities. 
This  is  the  present  ideal  of  English  life,  without  exception,  for  the  middle 
classes ;  and  a  more  miserable,  contemptible,  or  criminal  one  never  was 
formed  by  any  nation  made  under  the  wondering  stars.  It  implies  per- 
petual anxiety,  lazy  and  unjustifiable  pride,  innumerable  petty  vexations, 
daily  more  poignant  greed  for  money,  and  the  tyrannous  compulsion  of 
the  labouring  poor  into  every  form  of  misery;  and  it  implies,  further,  total 
ignorance  of  all  the  real  honour  of  human  life  and  beauty  of  the  visible 
world.  I  felt  all  this  borne  in  upon  me,  almost  to  the  point  of  making 
me  give  up  all  further  effort  here  in  England,  and  going  away  to  die 
among  the  Alps,  when  I  walked  early  this  week  across  what  were  once 
fields,  but  are  now  platforms  of  mud  and  bitumen,  to  what  we  used  to 
call  the  '  Happy  Valley,'  ^  and  the  scenes,  by  Ferry  Hinksey  (but  *  in  the 
two  Hinkseys  nothing  keeps  the  same '2),  of  my  former  endeavours  to  set 
some  undergraduates  to  useful  country  labour.*  Every  beautiful  view,  either 
of  Oxford  or  from  it,  is  now  scarified  and  blasted  by  the  detestable  con- 
ditions of  labour,  which  always  mean  that  a  company  or  a  capitalist  are 

^  [November  29.] 

2  "See  above,  p.  127.] 

3  [An  interpolation  of  the  reporter  s,  from  Matthew  Arnold's  Thynis.] 
^  [See  Vol.  XX.  pp.  xl.  seq.l 

527 


528         FINAL  LECTURES  AT  OXFORD 


ruining  either  themselves  or  somebody  else.^  There  is  not  an  old  path  to 
be  trodden,  or  an  old  memory  to  be  traced,  except  where  the  discouraged 
and  desperate  cottagers  here  and  there  maintain  still  a  rugged  fence  or 
let  run  a  half-choked  ditch  round  the  melancholy  yards  or  gardens  which 
they  can  still  call  their  own. 

9.  "Now,  what  is  the  use,"  Mr.  Ruskin  went  on  to  ask,  "under  these 
conditions,  of  my  talking  to  you  about  birds  Are  their  nests  to  be  built 
in  the  waterworks  reservoir?  is  their  song  to  be  heard  in  the  morning 
above  the  steam  buzzer 2  and  the  roll  of  the  tramway.^  have  you  still 
hearts  to  listen  to  it,  if  it  could  be }  What  do  you  want  of  them  now, 
but  for  such  deadly  science  or  deadlier  luxury  as  may  best  feed  your  itch 
for  notoriety  of  some  sort — their  skeletons  or  their  skins  And  I  have 
actually  been  unable,  from  the  mere  distress  and  disgust  of  what  I  had 
to  read  of  bird-slaughter,  to  go  on  with  Love's  Meinie.  I  will  make  you  a 
little  miserable,  with  myself,  in  letting  you  hear  accurately  described  the 
sort  of  thing  that  is  going  on  continually." 

10.  Mr.  Ruskin  then  read  two  extracts  from  "a  thoroughly  trust- 
worthy book,"  Mr.  Robert  Gray's  Birds  of  the  West  of  Scotland,^  describing, 
among  other  things,  how  some  ornithologist  of  the  party  had  shot  two 
parent  divers  and  their  little  ones.  Some  others  of  the  party  had  seen 
the  little  ones  the  day  before,  and  had  given  them  their  first  swimming 
lesson,  but  the  ornithologists  wanted  their  skins.  The  other  extract  told 
how  the  same  party  (minus  the  ornithologists  this  time,  it  would  seem) 
had  taken  on  board  their  yacht  a  live  specimen  of  the  tyste,  or  black 
guillemot,  and  made  a  pet  of  him.  When  he  desired  to  leave  his  basket 
the  little  fellow  would  "raise  himself  upon  his  hinder  end  till  he  was 
almost  as  tall  as  a  little  spruce  tree  ;  and  then  he  would  waddle  on  to 
the  palm  of  a  person's  hand,  and  sit  there  flapping  his  wings  as  if  he 
were  flying  at  the  1  ate  of  fifty  miles  an  hour ;  and  then  he  would  rest 
himself  on  his  abdomen,  and  shut  one  eye,  and  wink  with  the  other  at 
the  sun.  But  the  cabin-boy  said  from  the  beginning  that  he  was  too  good 
to  live."  "The  little  creature  died,  I  believe,"  Mr.  Ruskin  here  put  in, 
"angelically,  of  being  too  happy;  but  does  not  this  show  you  how  natural 
it  is  for  men  and  birds  to  love  each  other,  and  live  with  each  other  joy- 
fully ? — if  it  were  not  for  these  ghastly  skin  and  bone  mongers  who  call 
themselves  ornithologists,  and  the  still  wretcheder  and  ghastlier  form  of 
English  booby  squire,  who  knows  nothing  and  cares  for  nothing  in  all  the 
earth  but  how  to  wink  along  a  gun-barrel  till  he  can  sight  it  to  blow 
the  brains  out  of  something,  and  he  thinks  that  clever,  and  the  best  part 
of  the  life  of  a  lord.""* 

11.  Mr.  Ruskin  then  went  on  to  illustrate,  from  a  book  of  scientific 
travel,  a  different  method  of  intelligent  destruction — that  of  "the  mob, 

^  [Here  the  reporter  interpolated  :  ''^  Mr.  Ruskin  need  not,  though,  have  put 
the  alternative,  for  the  Oxford  Building  Company  has  ruined  both  itself  and  many 
others."] 

2  [See  above,  p.  504.] 

^  [For  another  reference  to  the  book,  see  Loiies  Meinie  (Vol.  XXV.  p.  150) ; 
the  passages  here  referred  to  are  at  pp.  415-416,  430-431.] 

*  [On  Ruskin's  view  of  such  sport,  see  Vol.  VII.  p.  341,  and  Vol.  XXVI. 
p.  822.] 


II.  BIRDS,  AND  HOW  TO  PAINT  THEM  529 


who,  not  having  guns,  take  to  stones,"  and  the  kind  of  study  of  birds  in 
connection  therewith.  Here  is  the  method  of  destruction:  ''At  one  place 
ten  cormorants  and  three  steamer  ducks  were  assembled  on  three  small 
rocks,  placed  side  by  side,  and  would  not  take  their  departure  till  I  had 
thrown  a  succession  of  stones  at  them.  .  .  .  One  or  two  which  had  been 
hit  with  stones  lay  on  their  backs  on  the  beach  for  some  minutes,  emitting 
strange  sounds,  and  waving  about  their  splay  feet  in  the  air,  in  the  most 
ridiculous  manner."  And  here  is  an  example  of  what  these  sportsmen 
saw  in  a  bird  they  had  "fortunately  killed":  ''The  stomach  was  distinctly 
divided  into  a  cardiac  and  a  pyloric  portion,  separated  by  a  short  and 
narrow  interval.  Of  these  portions  the  cardiac  division  possessed  a  com- 
paratively feeble  muscular  coat,  and  was  remarkably  glandular;  while  the 
pyloric,  of  a  somewhat  flattened  spheroidal  form,  was  extremely  muscular. 
The  former  I  found  distended  with  a  firm  mass  of  semi-digested  ship  biscuit, 
while  the  latter  contained  the  two  mandibles  of  a  small  cephalopod." 

12.  This  is  the  way  Enghsh  men  of  science  look  at  birds,  and  English 
painters  have  hardly  anything  better  to  tell  us  of  them.  Art  in  this  kind 
may  be  divided  under  four  heads.  There  is  first  of  all  common  still  life — 
"  dead  game,  with  a  cut  lemon  and  a  glass  and  bottle — the  most  wretched  of 
human  stupidities."  Then  there  is  still  life,  with  some  enjoyment  of  colour 
— '*  fruit  pieces,  usually  with  handsome  plate — things  such  as  Lance  ^  used  to 
paint,  and  many  other  suppliers  of  the  trade — not  worth  notice."  Very 
different  is  William  Hunt's  work,  whether  in  fruit  or  birds — "  chiefly  doves 
— unique  in  excellence,  but  still  not  didactic."  And  finally,  there  is  the 
animal  painting  of  Landseer  and  Mr.  Briton  Riviere.  Landseer,  however, 
is  "strictly  only  a  horse  and  dog  painter;  he  seldom  attempted  birds,  and 
wheri  he  did  he  failed.  Riviere  has  done  some  wonderful  ornithology — of 
a  comic  kind — as,  for  instance,  in  his  'An  Anxious  Moment,'  in  which  a 
flock  of  geese  are  debating  whether  they  may  with  safety  pass  by  an 
old  hat." 

IS.  The  true  portraiture  of  birds,  then,  is  one  of  the  things  which 
English  painters  have  still  to  do,  and  Mr.  Ruskin's  pupils  would  find 
plenty  of  examples  in  his  own  studies  in  plumage  in  his  dra wing-school. ^ 
But  artists  will  never  be  able  to  paint  birds  so  long  as  they  study  in 
modern  schools  of  science.  "The  true  artist,"  Mr.  Ruskin  said,  in  a 
former  Oxford  lecture,  "if  he  wishes  to  paint  a  dog,  looks  at  him  and  loves 
him,  does  not  vivisect  him."^  So  is  it  with  birds.  Whatever  Science  may 
be  concerned  with  on  its  own  account,  as  a  foundation  for  Art  it  must 
look  at  a  bird's  plumage,  not  at  the  contents  of  its  stomach.  Mr.  Ruskin 
laid,  therefore,  some  of  this  true  scientific  groundwork  on  Saturday,  by 
some  notes  on  feather  analysis.  Birds,  he  said,  have  three  kinds  of 
feathers:  (!)  feathers  for  clothing,  which  again  may  be  subdivided  into 
flannel  feathers  and  armour  feathers ;  (2)  feathers  for  action— either  feathers 

1  [For  another  reference  to  George  Lance  (1802-1864),  see  Vol.  XII.  p.  400; 
for  William  Hunt's  fruits  and  birds,  Vol.  XIV.  pp.  377  seq.,  440  seq. ;  for  Landseer, 
see  the  General  Index.  For  other  references  to  Mr.  Briton  Riviere,  see  Art  of 
England,  §  63  (above,  p.  810);  his  "Anxious  Moment"  was  at  the  Royal  Academy 
in  1878 ;  the  picture  is  at  Holloway  College.] 

2  [See  the  Index  in  Vol.  XXI.  pp.  325-826.] 

3  [See  Vol.  XXII.  p.  508.] 

XXXIII.  2  ^' 


530         FINAL  LECTURES  AT  OXFORD 


of  force  in  the  wing,  or  of  steerage  in  the  tail;  and  (3)  feathers  for 
decoration  and  expression  ^ — which  either  modify  the  bird's  form  (crests,  e.g., 
or  tassels),  or  its  colour,  by  lustre  or  pigment. 

14.  It  should  be  noted  generally  that  the  underclothing,  the  down, 
is  always  white  in  adult  birds ;  and  the  prevailing  colour  of  the  upper 
feathers,  in  land  birds  of  temperate  zones,  brown,  and  in  sea  birds  white. 
"The  theorists  of  development,"  continued  Mr.  Ruskin,  "say,  I  suppose, 
that  partridges  get  brown  by  looking  at  stubble,  seagulls  white  by  looking 
at  foam,  and  jackdaws  black  by  looking  at  clergymen.  The  theory  at  first 
is  plausible,  as  are  the  ideas  of  development  in  general,  to  people  who 
like  guessing  better  than  thinking ;  but  you  may  see  its  fallacy  in  an 
instant  by  reflecting  that  if  sea  birds  were  really  coloured  by  the  sea,  thoy 
would  be  blue,  not  white ;  if  land  birds  were  coloured  by  their  woods,  t!iey 
would  be  green,  not  brown;  and  that  birds  of  darkness,  both  in  feather 
and  spirit,  must  have  been  suited  with  sable,  not  by  our  cathedral,  but 
our  manufacturing  towns."  Coming  next  to  force  feathers  and  decorative 
feathers,  Mr.  Ruskin  noted  that  they  are  usually  reserved  and  quiet  in 
colour.  "There  is  no  iridescent  eagle,  no  purple  and  golden  seagull;  while 
a  large  mass  of  coloured  birds — parrots,  pheasants,  humming  birds — seem 
meant  for  human  amusement.  Seem  meant — dispute  it  if  you  will :  no 
matter  what  they  seem,  they  are  the  most  amusing  and  infinitely  delicious 
toys,  lessons,  comforts,  amazements  of  human  existence.  Think  of  it,  for 
here  is  a  curious  thing." 

15.  "Ever  since  I  have  known  children,"  Mr.  Ruskin  said,  in  con- 
clusion, "or  heard  talk  of  them,  I  have  noticed  that  they  liked  running 
after  butterflies,  and  are  represented  in  poetical  vignettes  as  if  that  were 
an  amiable  occupation  of  theirs.  I  would  give  any  child  I  had  the  care 
of,  a  good  horsewhip  or  ponywhip  cut  over  the  shoulders  if  I  caught  it 
running  after  a  butterfly.  The  way  to  see  a  butterfly  is,  as  for  everything 
else,  to  see  it  alive.  If  you're  quiet  enough  it  will  settle  under  your  nose 
or  on  your  sleeve ;  and  if  it's  a  rare  one,  and  you  don't  kill  it,  it  will  be 
less  rare  next  year,  until  you  may  have  pur})le  emperors  flying  about,  as 
plentiful  as  now  you  have  smuts.  But  also  when  you've  got  it  and  piimed 
it  wriggling  on  a  cork,  what's  the  good  of  it?  It  is  merely  an  ill-made 
bird,  the  intermediate  thing  between  a  bird  and  a  worm.  It  has  wings, 
but  is  for  the  most  part  more  blown  about  by  them  than  lifted  ;  it  has 
legs,  but  it  can't  hop  with  them  or  catch  anything  with  them ;  it  has 
brains,  but  never  has  the  least  idea  where  it's  going ;  it  has  eyes,  but 
doesn't  see  anything  particular  with  them  that  I  know  of ;  ears,  perhaps, 
I  don't  know  ;  voice,  I  don't  know  ;  anyhow,  it  can't  whistle.  Feathers  it 
has,  which  rub  off  if  you  touch  them,  like  so  much  mildew.  A  precious 
sort  of  thing  to  catch  and  transfix  what  poor  little  life  and  succulent 
pleasure  the  creature  has  evermore  out  of  its  body,  that  you  may  pin  it 
on  your  hat  and  say  it's  the  Jackiana  Tomfooliensis  !  But  I  will  tell  you 
what  you  can  catch,  and  catch  innocently, — feathers ;  and  a  single  feather 
has  more  to  study  in  it  than  fifty  butterflies.  Here's  Christmas  coming — 
general  roast  turkey  and  goose-pie  time.  You  know  I'm  no  vegetarian. 
I  wouldn't  have  you  dine  on  nightingales'  tongues  ;  but  quantities  of  birds 
are  born,  like  sheep,  to  be  finally  dined  on.    Well,  you  go  and  help  the 


^  [See,  further,  on  this  classification.  Laws  of  Fesole,  Vol.  XV.  p.  397.] 


11.  BIRDS,  AND  HOW  TO  PAINT  THEM  531 


cook  to  pluck  her  game,  and  in  a  single  Christmas  you  may  gather  plumage 
enough  to  be  a  wonder  to  you  all  your  days.  Begin  with  the  pheasant. 
Put  the  characteristic  breast,  shoulder,  wing,  and  tail  feather  into  expli- 
cable order,  prettily  stitched  down  on  cardboard,  or  velvet,  or  anything 
that  sets  them  off.  Then  put  the  feathers  of  any  other  birds  you  can 
get  hold  of  into  the  same  order— that  is  to  say,  put  the  main  feather 
of  a  seagull's  wing,  a  swallow's,  an  owl's,  a  pheasant's,  and  a  barn-door 
fowl's  side  by  side — similarly  the  main  central  types  of  breast  feather, 
tail  feather,  and  so  on.  Then  draw  their  outUnes  carefully,  then  their 
patterns  of  colour,  then,  analyzed  up  to  the  point  of  easy  magnifying, 
their  shafts  and  filaments,  and  see  what  a  new  world  of  beauty  you  will 
have  entered  into — before  the  sun  turns  to  go  up  hill  again. 

16.  And  when  he  does  turn  up  hill  again,  if  any  of  you  care  to  put 
your  lives  a  little  to  rights,  and  to  prime  your  own  feathers  for  what 
flight  is  in  them — don't  go  to  London,  nor  to  any  other  town  in  the 
spring  1 — don't  let  the  morning  winds  of  May  find  your  cheeks  pale  and 
your  eyes  bloodshot  with  sitting  up  all  night,  nor  the  violets  bloom  for 
you  only  in  the  salesman's  bundles,  nor  the  birds  sing  around,  if  not  above, 
the  graves  you  liave  dug  for  yourselves  before  your  time.  Time  enough 
you  will  have  hereafter  to  be  deaf  to  their  song,  and  ages  enough  to  be 
blind  to  their  brightness,  if  you  seek  not  the  sight  given  now.  If  there 
be  any  human  love  in  your  youth,  if  any  sacred  hope,  if  any  faithful 
religion,  let  them  not  be  defiled  and  quenched  among  the  iniquities  of 
the  multitude.  Your  Love  is  in  the  clefts  of  the  Rock,  when  the  flowers 
appear  on  the  earth,  and  the  time  of  the  singing  of  birds  is  come,  and 
the  God  of  all  Love  calls  to  you  ^from  the  top  of  Amana,  from  the  top 
of  Shenir  and  Hermon,'  calls  to  every  pure  spirit  among  the  children  of 
men,  as  they  to  those  they  love  best — 

"  ^  Arise,  my  love,  my  fair  one,  and  come  away.' "  ^ 


1  [Compare  Two  Paths,  §  137  (Vol.  XVL  p.  372).] 

2  [Canticles  ii.  12 ;  iv.  8  ;  ii.  10.] 


Ill 


A  LECTURE  ON  LANDSCAPE 

(Reprinted  from  ihe  ''Pall  Mall  Gazette,''  December  lOfk,  1884) 

17.  Mr.  Ruskin's  final  lecture  to  his  pupils  for  this  term,  given  at  Oxford 
last  week,i  began  with  an  expression  of  the  disappointment  and  surprise 
which,  on  reviewing  the  results  of  my  lecturing  and  working  here  for 
upwards  of  twelve  years,^  I  feel  in  being  forced  to  the  sorrowful  confession 
that  not  a  single  pupil  has  learned  the  things  I  primarily  endeavoured  to 
teach,  nor  used  of  his  own  accord,  so  far  as  I  know,  in  a  single  instance, 
the  examples  which  I  put  before  him  as  most  admirable  in  my  especial 
department  of  art,  landscape." 

18.  How  complete  and  numerous  these  examples  are  every  one  knows 
who  has  visited  the  Taylorian  picture-gallery  or  seen  in  the  ''  Ruskin 
Drawing-school "  the  insides  of  the  cabinets  filled  with  Mr.  Ruskin's  own 
drawings.^  You  may  wonder,"  continued  Mr.  Ruskin,  "why  the  examples 
I  have  given  you  of  landscape  in  the  school  are  my  drawings  and  not 
Turner's.  But  Turner's  are  of  a  finesse  beyond  what  has  ever  else  been 
attained,  and  for  that  reason  not  useful  as  working  examples.^  But  I  am 
proud  to  think  that  these  drawings  of  mine  "  (several  of  which  were  ex- 
hibited at  the  lecture),  "done  thirty  years  ago  at  the  foot  of  the  Matter- 
horn,  are  entirely  right  as  examples  of  mountain  drawing,  with  absolutely 
correct  outline  of  all  that  is  useful  for  geological  science  or  landscape  art. 
And  I  am  proud  to  think,  too,  that  though  at  the  time  I  did  them  I  had 
never  seen  Turner's  drawings,  mine  are  on  exactly  the  same  plan  as  his — 
that  is  to  say,  I  always  drew  an  absolutely  right  pencil  outline  before 
putting  in  any  colour  whatever.  But  though '  1  have  been  preaching, 
crying,  shrieking  to  you  that  this  is  the  method  of  all  true  landscape 
painting,^  there  is  not  one  of  you  who  sharpens  his  pencil  point,  instead 
of  seizing  his  biggest  brush  and  going  dab  at  the  mountains  with  splashes 
of  colour.  And  then  in  the  gallery  upstairs  there  is  the  unequalled  collec- 
tion of  Turner  drawings,  which  with  some  self-denial  I  gave  you  twenty 
years  ago,  and  which  has  lately  been  completed  by  the  kindness  of  the 
Trustees  of  the  National  Gallery,  at  the  intercession  of  Prince  Leopold."  ^ 

1  [On  December  6.] 

^  [The  years  of  Ruskin's  professorship  were  ten  (1870-1877  and  1883-1884) ;  but 
he  includes,  no  doubt,  the  work  done  in  his  Drawing  School  during  the  inter- 
mediate years.] 

3  [See  now  Vol.  XXL] 

*  [Compare  Art  of  England,  %  157  (above,  p.  373).] 

^  [See,  for  instance,  Vol.  XII.  pp.  487  seq..  Vol.  XIII.  pp.  241  seq..  Vol.  XV. 
pp.  136,  857,  and  Vol.  XXI.  p.  237.] 
"  [See  above,  p.  268.] 

532 


III.  LANDSCAPE 


533 


19.  Why  was  it,  then,  Mr.  Ruskin  returned  to  ask,  that  none  of  his 
examples  in  landscape  had  been  used,  none  of  his  principles  adopted? 
"I  perhaps  trusted  too  much  to  what  I  had  before  written  on  the  subject 
of  landscape,  and  in  the  first  years  of  my  professorship  drew  the  atten- 
tion of  my  pupils  only  to  the  higher  conditions  of  pictorial  imagination, 
which  had  been  occupied  in  religion  and  ethics.  As  it  has  turned  out,  the 
religion  of  England  being  in  its  practical  power  extinct  before  her  science, 
and  the  ethics  of  England  extinct  before  her  avarice,  everything  that  I 
have  written  of  the  religious  painting  of  Italy  has  been  useless,  until 
lately  in  the  form  of  guide-books ;  1  while  the  value  of  the  few  words  I 
spoke  on  landscape  was  still  more  hopelessly  effaced  by  the  vast  irrup- 
tion of  sensual  figure-study,  patronised  by  the  now  all-powerful  Republican 
demi-monde  of  the  French  capital.  Respecting  the  general  relations  and 
dignities  of  landscape  and  figure-painting,  I  purpose  very  earnestly  and 
carefully  to  address  you  in  a  spring  lecture. 2  But  with  respect  to  the 
especial  danger  and  corruption  of  existing  schools  of  the  figure,  I  must 
point  out  one  or  two  chief  facts  for  your  immediate  consideration. 

20.  "First,  landscape,  however  feeble  or  fantastic,  cannot  be  definitely 
immoral.  It  neither  mocks  what  is  venerable  nor  recommends  what  is 
lascivious.  But  the  sale  of  figure  sketches  or  paintings,  by  persons  of 
inferior  talent,  depends  almost  exclusively  on  its  being  addressed  to  the 
vanity,  the  lust,  or  the  idle  malice  of  the  classes  of  society  developed  by 
the  corruption  of  large  towns. 

21.  '^Secondly,  the  idea  of  greater  dignity  naturally  attached  to  figure 
painting  of  higher  pretension,  because  it  implies  a  strict  course  of  pre- 
vious academical  study,  entirely  ignores  the  primary  law  of  human  educa 
tion,  that  the  more  you  teach  a  fool  the  more  manifold  a  fool  you  make 
him.  Nothing  is  so  melancholy,  nothing  so  mischievous,  as  the  academical 
imitations  of  the  great  men  by  the  little  ones,  and  the  pompous  display 
of  laboriously  artificial  attainments  by  men  of  faculties  inherently  and 
natively  contemptible.  During  the  first  half  of  this  century  the  artists 
of  England  were  divisible,  almost  without  exception,  into  two  classes — 
men  of  modesty,  sense,  and  industry,  who  were  forming  a  pure  school 
of  pathetic  and  meditative  landscape,  rising  with  the  quiet  flow  of  a  moun- 
tain well  out  of  the  formality  of  the  older  'views'  of  this  and  that;  and 
men,  on  the  other  hand,  of  mean  ambition,  foolish  sentiment,  and  vulgar 
breeding,  who  reduced  the  figure-painting  of  the  Academy  to  the  inanity 
from  which  it  was  only  rescued  by  the  splendid  indignation  of  Rossetti, 
Millais,  and  Holman  Hunt — all  of  them,  observe,  introducing,  if  not  as 
the  basis,  at  least  as  an  essential  and  integral  part  of  their  conception,  a 
landscape  elaborated  to  the  last  grass  blade  and  flower  petal. 

22.  "Thirdly,  I  will  not  in  this  brief  notice  touch  on  the  actual 
difficulties  of  landscape,  as  compared  with  figure  painting,  but  I  beg  you 
to  observe  the  requirement  for  it  of  far  greater  industry.  With  an  hour's 
work  a  good  figure  painter  can  produce  a  satisfactorily  realistic  image  of 
the  fairest  human  creature;  set  him  to  paint  a  heathy  crag  or  a  laurel 

1  [Mornings  in  Florence  (Vol.  XXIII.),  St.  Mark's  Best,  and  Guide  to  the  Venetian 
Academy  (Vol.  XXXIV.).]  ^    .  „ 

2  [Ruskin,  however,  resigned  his  chair  in  the  spring,  and  this  was  the  last  ot 
his  professorial  lectures.] 

XXXIII.  ^  ^2 


534         FINAL  LECTURES  AT  OXFORD 


coppice,  and  see  what  he  will  make  of  it,  giving  him  an  hour  for  every 
former  minute,  or  sixty  hours  instead  of  one.  Why,  then,  paint  it  with 
so  much  care,  do  you  say,  when  the  painting  of  the  pretty  lady  is  so 
much  nicer?  Well,  my  own  answer  to  that  would  be.  Because  the  pretty 
lady  herself  is  so  much  nicer  than  the  painting,  and  will  always  be  there 
if  you  ask  her ;  but  the  laurel  coppice  or  the  heather  crag  won't  come  for 
the  asking;  you  must  paint  them  or  forget  them.  Returning  to  my  main 
point,  note  that  the  painting  of  landscape  requires  not  only  more  industry, 
but  far  greater  delicacy  of  bodily  sense  and  faculty  than  average  figure 
painting.  Any  common  sign-painter  can  paint  the  landlord's  likeness,  and 
with  a  year  or  two's  scraping  of  chalk  at  Kensington  any  cockney  student 
can  be  got  to  draw,  effectively  enough  for  public  taste,  a  straddling  gladiator 
or  a  curly-pated  Adonis.  But  to  give  the  slightest  resemblance  to,  or 
notion  of,  such  a  piece  of  mountain  wildwood  or  falling  stream  as  these, 
in  this  little  leap  of  the  Tees  in  Turner's  drawing,^  needs  an  eagle's  keen- 
ness of  eye,  fineness  of  finger  like  a  trained  violinist's,  and  patience  and 
love  like  Griselda's  or  Lady  Jane  Grey's. 

23.  "Without,  however,  further  reasoning  just  now  why  or  with  what 
feelings  we  should  try  to  paint  landscape,  I  return  to  my  immediate  busi- 
ness, to  ask  you  why  in  no  single  instance  any  of  you  have  painted  a 
bit  in  my  way.  For  one  of  you  that  used  to  go  to  Scotland  or  Switzer- 
land, a  thousand  fw  now ;  for  one  descriptive  passage  in  poetry  or  novel 
that  used  to  be  given  before  Scott  and  Byron  told  you  that  nature  was 
beautiful,  a  thousand  romancers  and  troubadours  paint  now  their  landscape 
backgrounds  for  personages  whom  they  couldn't  make  else  of  any  account ; 
and  yet  here  are  twelve  years  I  have  been  your  drawing-master,  and  not 
one  of  you  has  brought  me  a  bit  of  Alpine  snow,  of  Greek  sea,  or  of 
English  greenwood,  drawn  with  as  much  pains  or  heart  as  dear  old  William 
Hunt  put  into  a  horn  tankard.  I  do  not  know  what  your  answer  would 
or  will  be.  But  my  own  explanation  of  this  scorn  of  landscape  will  cer- 
tainly surprise  you.  I  attribute  it,  and  I  attribute  it  with  a  very  strong 
conviction,  to  your  having  no  sympathy  with  the  people  who  inhabit  the 
countries  you  visit.  No  passage  of  niy  old  books  is  more  often  quoted  than 
that  in  the  Seven  Lamps  as  to  the  entire  interest  of  landscape  depending 
on  our  sympathy  with  its  history  and  inhabitants."  2 

"But  this  point,"  Mr.  Ruskin  said,  "I  have  never  enough  reinforced. 
The  lecture  in  which  I  partly  did  so  was  never  published  ;2  and  you  all 
go  rushing  about  the  world  in  search  of  Cotopaxis  and  Niagaras,  when  all 
the  rocks  of  the  Andes  and  all  the  river  drainages  of  the  two  Americas 
are  not  worth  to  you,  for  real  landscape,  pathos,  and  power,  this  wayward 
tricklet  of  a  Scottish  burn  over  its  shelves  of  low-levelled  sandstone." 
Mr.  Ruskin  here  showed  the  early  Turner  which  he  has  lately  acquired, 
and  to  which  he  referred  in  a  former  lecture.^    "  Its  whole  force,"  he  said, 

^  [See  No.  2  in  the  Standard  Series:  Vol.  XXI.  p.  11.] 

*  [The  passage  in  question  is  that  in  which  Ruskin  describes  *'the  broken 
masses  of  pine  forest  which  skirt  the  course  of  the  Ain  above  the  village  of 
Champagnole,  in  the  Jura"  :  see  Vol.  VIII.  pp.  221-224.] 

^  [The  first  of  the  Lectures  on  Landscape,  delivered  in  1871,  not  published  till 
1898  :  see  now  Vol.  XXII.  pp.  12  seq.] 

^  [See  above,  p.  506.] 


III.  LANDSCAPE 


535 


consists  in  a  dreamy  and  meditative  sense  that  men  were  once  living 
there,  and  that  spirits  are  still  moving  there — that  it  was  full  of  traces  of 
the  valour  of  our  ancestors,  just  as  it  may  still  be  full,  if  you  will,  of  the 
sanctities  of  your  love." 

24.  To  illustrate  the  contrary  case — the  absence  of  delight  in  land- 
scape, accompanied  and  conditioned  by  a  want  of  sympathy  for  the  people 
— Mr.  Ruskin  read  from  Evelyn's  Diary  a  series  of  extracts  written  for 
him  by  his  god-daughter  with  a  type-writer — ''the  only  kind  of  machine  of 
which  I  do  approve."  First  there  was  English  enjoyment  of  English  land- 
scape at  Spie  Park,  where  the  house  had  "not  a  window  on  the  prospect 
side."  1  That  is  the  rough  type  ;  for  the  gentle  type  Mr.  Ruskin  referred  to 
Evelyn's  building  "a  study,  a  fishpond,  an  island,  and  some  other  solitudes 
and  retirements"  at  Wotton,  which  ''gave  the  first  occasion  of  improving 
them  to  waterworks  and  gardens."  2  As  for  English  travellers'  enjoyment 
of  French  landscape,  "we  passed  through  a  forest  (of  Fontainebleau),  so 
prodigiously  encompassed  with  hideous  rocks  of  white,  hard  stone,  heaped 
one  on  another  in  mountainous  height,  that  I  think  the  like  is  nowhere 
to  be  found  more  horrid  and  solitary."  For  an  example  of  "  French  and 
characteristically  European  manufactured  landscape,"  Mr.  Ruskin  referred  to 
Evelyn's  description  of  Richelieu's  villa,  with  its  "walks  of  vast  lengthes, 
so  accurately  kept  and  cultivated,  that  nothing  can  be  more  agreeable,"  and 
its  "  large  and  very  rare  grotto  of  shell-worke,  in  the  shape  of  satyrs  and 
other  wild  fancys."  The  human  sympathy  involved  in  manufactured  land- 
scape is  to  be  seen  in  its  cost — "  He  has  pulled  downe  a  whole  village  to 
make  roome  for  his  pleasure  about  it " — making  a  solitude,  and  calling  it 
delight.^  And  then,  lastly,  Mr.  Ruskin  read  an  account  of  how  Evelyn 
took  his  pleasure  in  the  Alps,  passing  through  "  strange,  horrid,  and  fearful 
craggs,"  and  treating  the  natives — as  only  the  British  tourist  knows  how. 
The  pious  Evelyn,  or  one  of  his  party,  had  a  water  spaniel,  "a  huge, 
filthy  cur,"  that  killed  a  goat,  "whereupon  we  set  spurrs  and  endeavoured 
to  ride  away";  but  inasmuch  as  "amongst  these  rude  people  a  very  small 
misdemeanour  is  made  much  of,  we  lay'd  down  the  money,  though  the 
proceedings  seemed  highly  unjust."  These  proceedings  occurred  on  the 
Simplon  Pass ;  and  Mr.  Ruskin  showed,  in  contrast  to  them,  a  drawing 
of  the  St.  Gothard,  by  Turner,  in  which,  as  in  other  scenes,  it  is  a  human 
interest  that  gives  the  grandeur.  The  reader  will  remember  in  this  con- 
nection Mr.  Ruskin's  description  of  the  Pass  of  Faido,  in  Modern  Painters, 
where,  in  "Turnerian  topography,"  the  "full  essence  and  soul  of  the  scene 
and  consummation  of  all  the  wonderfulness  of  the  torrents  and  Alps  lay  in 
a  postchaise  with  small  ponies  and  postboy."  * 


1  [July  16,  1654.] 

2  [See  the  Diary  for  May  21,  1643.  For  Fontainebleau  (March  7,  1644),  compare 
Prceterita,  ii.  §  76,  where  Ruskin  again  quotes  the  passage  ;  for  Richelieu's  villa,  see 
February  27,  1643-1644;  the  next  passage  ("He  has  pulled  down,"  etc.),  in  the 
Diary  for  September  7,  1649,  is  said  of  "  President  Maison's  palace,"  near  Pans ;  for 
the  passage  of  the  Simplon,  see  1646.] 

3  ["  Solitudinem  faciunt,  pacem  appellant "  (Tacitus,  Agricola,  30) ;  translated  by 
Byron  in  The  Bride  of  Abydos,  canto  ii.  stanza  20.]  ,         ,  . 

'  4  [See  Modern  Painters,  vol.  iv.  (Vol.  VI.  p.  39).  The  drawing  shown  by  Ruskm 
was  of  "The  Pass  of  Faido,"  reproduced  on  Plate  IV.  of  Vol.  XXII.  (p.  32).J 


586         FINAL  LECTURES  AT  OXFORD 


25.  "  Now,  I  dare  say/'  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  resuming,  "  you  all  think  you 
have  improved  greatly  in  sense,  and  good-nature,  and  love  of  scenery  since 
Evelyn's  time.  I  admit  there  are  a  certain  number  of  you  very  different 
creatures  indeed.  But  there  is  nothing  to  me  so  amazing  in  Evelyn's  in- 
justice to  the  poor  peasants,  and  terrified  hatred  of  their  Alps,  as  there  is 
in  the  total  absence  from  the  papers  of  the  Alpine  Club  of  the  smallest 
expression  of  any  human  interest  in  anything  they  see  in  Switzerland 
except  the  soaped  poles  they  want  to  get  to  the  top  of/  and  their  con- 
tinual exultation,  over  their  cheese  and  beer,  in  their  guides'  legs  and 
their  own,  without  ever  appearing  conscious  for  an  instant  that  every 
valley  of  which  the  blue  breaks  through  the  cloud  at  their  feet  is  full  of 
the  most  beautiful  human  piety  and  courage,  being  gradually  corrupted  and 
effaced  by  European  vice,  after  contending  for  long  ages  with  conditions  of 
hardship  and  disease,  prolonged  by  European  neglect,  folly,  and  cruelty. 
And  of  the  less  adventurous  Englishman,  content  with  flatter  mountain 
tops,  here  without  question  is  the  central  type  for  this  hour."  Mr.  Ruskin 
here  showed  Punch's  cartoon  of  "The  Old  Lion  Aroused,"  to  which  he 
had  referred  in  a  former  lecture,'-  and  in  doing  so  he  apologized  for  any 
pain  that  had  been  caused  by  his  thus  accidentally  ridiculing  Mr.  Bright — 
for  whose  character  he  had  in  most  things  a  great  respect,  although  it  was 
"an  awful  sign  of  the  times"  that  so  honourable  and  excellent  a  man 
should  have  stood  up  on  a  memorable  occasion  in  the  House  of  Commons 
to  defend  the  adulteration  of  food  as  a  legitimate  form  of  competition. ^ 
"  You  are  all  of  you,"  Mr,  Ruskin  resumed,  with  reference  to  this  cartoon, 
"resolving  yourselves,  and  that  with  rapidity,  into  this  kind  of  British 
person,  and  this  kind  of  British  standard-bearer — consumer  of  all  things 
consumable,  producer  of  nothing  but  darkness  and  abomination,  with  his 
foot  on  all  that  he  once  revered,  his  hope  lost  in  all  that  he  once  wor- 
shipped, a  god  to  himself,  and  to  all  the  world  an  incarnate  calamity. 

26.  "  Your  way  out  of  all  this  I  told  you  full  fourteen  years  ago,  in 
my  inaugural  lectures,  to  not  one  word  of  which  any  of  you  have  prac- 
tically attended.  I  have,  indeed,  one  pupil-friend,  an  accomplished  and 
amiable  artist,  another  a  conscientious  and  prosperous  lawyer^ — of  formal 
school  or  consistent  disciples  no  vestige  whatever.  The  time  may  yet 
come ;  anyhow  next  year  I  have  again,  with  the  ever-ready  help  of  Mr. 
Macdonald,  to  begin  at  the  beginning,  and  meanwhile  I  will  close  my 
discourses  to  you  for  this  year  by  re-reading  the  conditions  of  prosperous 
art  work  which  I  laid  before  you  in  1870."  The  passage  which  Mr. 
Ruskin  read  is  in  the  fourth  of  his  inaugural  Lectures  on  Art,  on  "  The 
Relation  of  Art  to  Use,"  in  which  it  was  laid  down  that  after  recover- 
ing, for  the  poor,  wholesomeness  of  food,  the  next  steps  towards  founding 
Schools  of  Art  in  England  must  be  in  recovering  for  them  decency  and 
wholesomeness  of  dress  and  of  lodging,  and  then  after  this  that  "  nothing 
be  ever  made  of  iron  that  can  be  as  effectually  made  of  wood  or  stone, 
and  nothing  moved  by  steam  that  can  be  as  effectually  moved  by  natural 

1  [See  Sesame  and  Lilies,  §  35  (Vol.  XVIII.  p.  90).] 

2  See  above,  p.  470.] 

3  [See  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  37  (Vol.  XXVIII.  pp.  16,  17).] 

*  [The  two  translators  for  Ruskin  of  The  Economist  of  Xenophon :  see  Vol.  XXXL 
p.  30.] 


III.  LANDSCAPE 


537 


forces.  .  .  .  And  until  you  do  this,  be  it  soon  or  late,  things  will  continue 
in  that  triumphant  state  to  which,  for  want  of  finer  art,  your  mechanism 
has  brought  them ;  that  though  England  is  deafened  with  spinning-wheels, 
her  people  have  not  clothes ;  though  she  is  black  with  digging  of  fuel, 
they  die  of  cold  ;  and  though  she  has  sold  her  soul  for  gain,  they  die  of 
hunger.  Stay  in  thzt  triumph,  if  you  choose  ;  but  be  assured  of  this,  it 
is  not  one  which  the  Fine  Arts  will  ever  share  with  you."  ^ 

27.  "  All  this,"  said  Mr.  Ruskin,  in  conclusion,  is  called  impossible. 
It  may  be  so.  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  its  possibility,  but  only  with  its 
indispensability.2  And  at  any  rate  this  much  is  possible  to  you — to  prefer 
life  in  the  country,  though  it  be  dull,  to  life  in  London,  though  it  is 
merry ;  to  look  at  one  thing  in  the  day,  instead  of  at  twenty ;  and  to 
think  of  that  one  in  such  a  way  as  will  give  you  some  love  for  man  and 
some  belief  in  God." 

1  [§§  122,  123 :  Vol.  XX.  pp.  111-114.] 

2  [Compare,  again,  Lectures  on  Art,  §  128  (Vol.  XX.  p.  113).] 


END  OF  VOLUME  XXXIII 


Printed  by  Ballantyne,  Hanson  &*  Co. 
Edinburgh  London 


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